Labyrinth of the Burning Heart
by Labyrinth
Summary: A ghost from Dr. Lecter's past forces both Lecter and Starling to rethink their decisions. [CHAPTER 12 UP] A forgotten story unfolds and the dead are reborn...
1. Memories

**Labyrinth of the Burning Heart**

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By Jstarz927 and Aine Deande

Disclaimer: This disclaimer will apply to this and all subsequent chapters. Thomas Harris owns all characters you recognize. All those you do not belong to us and to themselves. No profit is being made from this story and no copyright infringement is intended.

A/N: Our first collab, whoohoo! *tosses confetti and harpies and small children through the air* We'd like to thank Nyx for kindly proofreading the first two chapters, MsLecter for allowing us to use some elements from "Quid Pro Quo," and all writers who have encouraged us throughout the composition of this endless saga.

This story is still being written even as I type and more chapters can be found at the Visionary forum. We will post chapters here in increments so you won't have quite as long a wait between new chapters as the poor Visions readers. (Sorry, dahlings.)

Setting: Approximately one month after _Hannibal_, the movie…follows canon? Sure, why not.

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Chapter 1

Memories

Sunday, August 5, 2001, 1:00 am – Memphis, TN

Even inside the brightly lit house, Clarice Starling could see the revolving red and blue lights of the police cars through the window. Every second, the light seared her eyes and she was reminded of that night a month ago, flashing police lights seen through a morphine haze.

Clarice shook her head violently as if she could jog the memories out of her skull. Yet, as she made her way through the house, she found more and more to remind herself of that night. Blood spatters. So much blood. When Dr. Lecter had brought the cleaver down, she had passed out. It couldn't have been for more than half a minute, but when she came to her senses, the handcuff was swinging at her side, empty and covered with blood and splinters of bone.

Following the yellow police tape, she made her way through the house to a little workshop in the back. Inside, she could sense how the other officers' pulled away from her as if she were infected with something contagious. They formed a semi-circle of a distinct radius that never wavered, even when she moved. It was okay; Clarice had gotten used to the reactions over the past month. And she wasn't here to play favorites, but as a favor for the local police department. As she glanced up at the workshop wall, she quickly confirmed why she had been called.

The face of a woman, frozen in shock, stared down at Clarice from where she hung on the wall above a worktable. The woman's mouth hung open slightly and metal rods protruded from every inch of her blood-drained body.

_Wound Man. In Hannibal's house. Travis Newman, 37, white male, cause of death: severe blood loss and puncture wounds to the chest._ Like THAT wasn't already so obvious. _The cause of Dr. Lecter's capture_.

Clarice gazed solemnly into the woman's staring blue eyes as an agent hesitantly read the report to her. "Helen LaReine. Thirty-seven-year-old social worker. Cause of death--."

_Oh God, don't start this again._ "You think he did it, don't you?" Clarice interrupted quietly.

"Ma'am?"

She continued in an even softer voice, almost a whisper, yet everybody heard her. "Don't pretend you don't understand. It's stupid, it's boring. You called me here because this crime is in perfect likeness to one committed by known felon Dr. Hannibal Lecter. You wish to use me and my so-called expertise because you think there might be a connection. I don't like being used. But if you care to know, I can tell you that he had no part in this crime."

Complete silence in the room as a dozen men shifted their feet in awkwardness and suddenly developed undying fascinations in the concrete floor. Clarice turned to look at each of them in turn. She did not offer any words of reassurance, no comforting gestures of forgiveness. She let them feel the full impact of their discomfort just as the FBI had left her to drown in her own personal hell.

Then it was over. She was here to do her job. A piercing scream interrupted her as she was about to answer the unspoken question about Lecter.

A dozen heads turned as a fiery-haired woman burst into the room followed by three pursuing officers. The woman looked up and froze stock-still at the sight of the twisted and mangled body hanging before he eyes. She dropped to the floor as her legs collapsed beneath her. Her jaw oddly slack, something gurgled in her throat and then a fresh howl escaped her lips before disintegrating into racking sobs.

The three officers knelt to lift her to her feet, but the woman resisted, sobbing madly, several golden bracelets on her wrists scraping the ground as her fingertips dug into the concrete floor, as if she could meld herself into the ground.

"Oh, oh, Helen! My God, no, no, nonononono…" Her words ran together into an incomprehensible whimper as she curled into a fetal position and shuddered violently. The officers tended to her, and Clarice stared, hearing the sobs as if they were coming from far in the distance.

Clarice turned to the man who had spoken to her first, raising a questioning eyebrow.

The man quickly saw the chance to redeem himself and babbled quickly, "That's Rachel Ariadne Cahlin. She is, was, the victim's best friend. She wasn't supposed to be in here."

Clarice sensed Cahlin's emotions as something that seemed familiar to her. Grief? Did it exist for her anymore…?

In a voice betraying nothing she said, "Well, she's here now. And she is going to hear, along with you, just how you are going to catch the person who did this." She gazed upon all the men again, sizing them up and gauging their ability to make good use of what she was going to say next. She noticed with approval that one of them took out a notebook and pen.

"Dr. Lecter didn't do this because he would never be so crude as to pander to the public's idea of fun. There have been eight crimes over the past month that have stirred your suspicions, this one; one a week ago also in Memphis, the victim known only as H. Locke. Another crime in Belvedere, Ohio where the victim was fully flayed. A woman by the name of Heather Levenson. Another one in Asheville, North Carolina, a woman, hanged and her face hacked apart by glass. Name, Holly Lightfoot. Four other victims dispersed around the nation, names: Henny Lipman, Hillary Lindsay, Heather Lynette, and Hannah Longbeach."

She paused to let her words as well as their accusatory meaning sink in. They had not requested her help for an entire month. A whole month, during which they _knew_ that Lecter was loose and _knew_ that crimes like these could start happening again. And now their refusal to act had cost the lives of eight people and more to come.

She knew there would be more. It wasn't Lecter but someone trying very hard to _be_ Lecter. And doing a very good job of it. Simply by reviewing his work, Clarice had already created her profile for the killer. He was smart, extremely so. She could only hope that his confidence in the police's stupidity would cause him to do something rash.

And there was also something else to note, and it troubled her greatly. H. Locke, the killer's next to latest accomplishment was male, the only male in all the victims connected to this case. It seemed strange that the pattern would—

An officer was clearing his throat, obviously tired and impatient. _Asshole. Oh well._

Clarice sighed. She'd think on it later. "Only an idiot," she emphasized "idiot" for a beat too long to be accidental, "could fail to see the similarity in the initials of the victims. Hannibal Lecter does not murder by crude patterns and would feel greatly insulted that anyone would think so. This is the work of a pitiful copycat at best."

"Searching for Lecter would be looking in the wrong direction." _It would also be useless_, she thought. "However, the killer definitely knows of Dr. Lecter. This is most likely a sick fanatic's attempt at recognition."

Silence in the room except for several broken sobs from Cahlin. She was still maintaining her death-grip on the floor despite the officers' best attempts to remove her.

Clarice took in a long slow breath and forced herself to look at the body again. "You won't find any fingerprints on her. This killer is highly attentive to detail, making sure to have the work match Lecter's exactly. Searching the victims' histories won't help; he probably never knew them. He is killing randomly, giving attention only to the names of his victims."

"Why the locations ma'am? Belvedere, Memphis…?"

"The killer is choosing his locations by anyplace…tainted, so to speak, by Lecter. I would concentrate any further investigation in places such as Baltimore, St. Louis--" she paused, "You might even want to send someone to Florence if you have the resources. Now, if there isn't anything else?" She honestly didn't mean to be snappish then, but the sight of the body was beginning to burn her retinas, knocking upon her door of memory.

The officers silently shook their heads, and Clarice made her way towards the exit. Just as she was about to step out, Cahlin raised her hand and grabbed her shirt. Several of her golden bracelets caught on the edge of the material and jingled like so many sleigh bells. She stared wildly into Clarice's eyes, her voice punctured by intermittent sobs.

"You'll get him, won't you? The bastard who did this? Please…tell me you'll get him."

Clarice looked into her grief-stricken, hopeful eyes. Oddly calm, she said softly, "Ms. Cahlin, I'm not the person to ask about this. I can't do a damned thing, but maybe these men can help you."

Fresh tears sprang to Cahlin's eyes and her hands went slack. Clarice could still hear her sobbing as she exited the house and got into her Mustang. The sobs continued to ring in her head as she drove at breakneck speed away from the house to a phone booth and placed a call to Arlington.

Someone picked up immediately on the other end of the line and spoke in an impatient voice. "Hello?"

"Ardi?"

"Wha--Clarice?"

"Yeah."

"Clarice, where the hell are you?!"

"Memphis."

"Memphis?! What are you doing there? And why didn't you tell me, I've been worried sick for the past day!" A pause. "This doesn't have anything to do with--?" Ardelia let her sentence trail, but Clarice didn't need her to finish.

"Ardi, I wish I could say that it didn't, but it does."

"Why'd you do it, girl?"

"Because they begged me to, Ardi. I can't even remember the last time someone begged me to do something for them. And it just felt so damn good, that's why."

Ardelia was silent for a long time. When she spoke again, it sounded as if she were about to cry. "Come home tomorrow, okay, Clarice? Don't do this to yourself, please."

Clarice sighed, a long, long sigh. "Okay, Ardi. Tell them I won't be at work until Tuesday." She hung up before Ardelia had a chance to reply. She didn't want to say goodbye, she hated goodbyes.

As she made her way back to her vehicle, she could see the news crews already speeding their way to the LaReine house. It was approaching two in the morning by the time Clarice managed to leave the lights of the city behind. She should have booked a motel room, but she hadn't had time, and honestly didn't care either. Something tickled the back of her throat as she drove her car to the edge of a remote street, parked, and prepared for several hours of sleep before the sun came up. It would be safe enough, she still had her gun. It felt so ironic that the FBI would leave her the gun, with everything else they had taken away.

Clarice had related her editted version of events at the lakehouse to her superiors countless times. To Pearsall, Noonan, Tunberry, Pearsall again, and again, and again… It seemed as if they wanted her to tell it so many times that she would finally slip and modify her story. They simply could not accept that most of the key details had been lost in her morphine haze. _Where did he go? Did he tell you where he was going? Do you know how bad his wound was? Where did he go?_

When it became clear that she did not possess, or would not reveal, any further details, the FBI dropped her. They didn't say it outright, and at least they kept her from the talons of the media, but a wall had been built between Clarice Starling and the FBI. A wall that she was powerless to walk away from because the bureau was the only thing shielding her from the hungry public. The Bureau had told the media nothing other than the fact that Hannibal Lecter had escaped, had been wounded, and that Clarice Starling had survived a night with him. Speculations were flying thick as a Viking barrage of flaming arrows.

The "Beauty and the Beast" stories of yesteryear were nothing compared to the some of the graphic and vicious theories circulating now. These speculations would continue, and Clarice could not detach from the Bureau that loathed her because of that. The Bureau knew that as well as she, and they made the most of it.

Clarice was shuttled between sections, performing whatever tasks were needed. That was who she was. The FBI gopher. Filing paperwork for forensics, minding stakeouts for behavioral science, displaying herself as an oddity in the FBI hallways…the list was endless. If Krendler were still alive, he'd be having a field day.

Oh, and Crawford was dead. Clarice had always respected him, even if all he offered was cheap sympathy. And now, her last angel in the Bureau was gone.

Through all this, Clarice had plodded right along. She didn't act, she didn't speak out, she didn't do anything that would attract any more attention to her. All she could think about was the person who had done this to her.

At first, Clarice thought she hated Hannibal Lecter. She vowed to kill him over and over again despite the fact that she had no resources or means of doing so.

But then she knew that she could never hate him; curse and threaten with the direst fates imaginable, yes, but she could never hate. That was his power, and it infuriated her. The frantic police call from Memphis had come after this realization. She had accepted the duty, thinking the help she could give this case would be worth it, thinking she could control her emotions, her memories. But she had failed. And now what?

Go back to work, pretend like it never happened. Forget him. Hopeless, she knew. Perhaps she should have listened to Crawford's advice. Do not let Hannibal Lecter inside your head. Too late.

The thing that had been tickling the back of her throat rose to her eyes and the tears flowed freely. She allowed the sobs to come, racking her body and throat. Her sobs rang in her head and gradually disintegrated into wailing animal screams. She surrendered herself totally to her emotions, hoping her output of grief would purge some of her demons. She felt better after having done it but no less burdened. Her mouth tasted of sour bile and Clarice spat out the car window for a full minute. Back inside the car, she brought her shaking hands to her face as the night wore on.

Clarice Starling slept. And all she could see in her uneasy dreams were Rachel Ariadne Cahlin's grief-stricken face and Helen LaReine's staring, lifeless blue eyes.

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A/N: Next chapter coming in a week or so.


	2. The Encounter

**Labyrinth of the Burning Heart**

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A/N: We apologize in advance for the cliffhanger, for we are such sweet innocent angels…*ducks as her halo falls and shattered pieces fly everywhere* And as a note to those who've read this story already, we've changed some things, done some editing and whatnot, so you might want to read again. *hint hint*

Chapter 2

The Encounter

Clarice awoke around eleven in the morning. After dousing her nightmare-stricken and tear-stained face with her water bottle and futilely attempting to straighten her rumpled clothes, she began the long journey back home. From her windows, she watched the young children laugh on their way to church as she drove through the Memphis suburbs.

It took her the better part of the day to return home. And when she passed by Arlington she kept on driving, circling around and around the interstates. She was so lost in thought that she never noticed the car following her.

Clarice couldn't face Ardelia yet. She couldn't face anyone having anything to do with her screwed-up life for that matter. One way or another, Clarice ended up in Baltimore, roaming through desolate side streets and blind alleys. When the road became too narrow for her car, she got out and walked. The streets twisted over each other and looped around silent buildings and broken lampposts. Clarice felt as if she were descending farther and farther into an endless darkened labyrinth. Fair enough, as long as she could leave her life behind along the way.

An hour later, she found herself pushing through the swinging door of a smoky bar and diner and ordering her first glass of Jack Daniels over the counter. As dusk settled, Clarice prepared for a long night. She'd face her persecutors later. Everything was so much more bearable when she was totally hammered.

The bar was a dingy little place, filled with the haze of cigarettes and other less legal drugs, smelling of stale urine and bad breath. Set in a back alley in a tiny room that had been used four times before for various questionable functions. It was a place that only the lost seemed to be able to find. An old, cheap neon light boasting the sovereignty of Budweiser illuminated the interior of the bar with an eerie blue glow. Oldies wailed on the jukebox. For a hard dollar, the bartender would sell a glass of unwatered liquor. As Clarice carried her drink away to a booth, none of the other bleary eyes from the shadows of the bar turned to follow. She sat in the darkest corner where the neon would not flash into her eyes, and no one bothered her. Everybody minded their own business. Here was a safe, unchanging world. And people wondered why there were so many alcoholics in America.

Four drinks and an indefinite period of time later, Clarice found herself at the counter having a vicious argument with a customer possessing a face that would have fit better on a pig. The cause of the dispute was never determined but Clarice found her drink knocked over and amber liquid staining her shirt like blood. A huff and she was off to the bathroom; when she came back, her glass was set back upright and what little drink that remained still in the glass. Pig-face was nowhere to be found. _Good riddance_. She finished her drink, ignoring the odd numbness in her brain immediately afterwards, and proceeded to order three more.

She carried them all back to her darkened booth, away from the cold, blue neon. She was holding a glass in her hand, admiring the swirling patterns of the drink inside, noting how they seemed to slow with the time that passed, when she heard it.

The voice was choked by smoke and blurred by the alcohol in her brain. But there was no mistaking the peculiar metallic rasp. One that she had definitely heard only one time before.

"Hello Clarice…"

Clarice's eyes instinctively flashed toward the voice and her hands gripped her glass a bit tighter. A distinctive smell suddenly assaulted her nostrils, sharp and biting, unidentifiable, and she almost choked on it. Her heart half-skipped a beat before her liquor-laced brain slowed it almost to a stop.

_Oh hell, he's here. I should…oh, let me just finish this one last drink, I'll deal with it then._

The bearer of the voice saw nothing more than a brief roll of the eyes before Clarice returned to her drink. "Tsk tsk, Clarice. Hardly the greeting I was expecting. May I sit?"

Clarice waved a limp hand at the fake leather cushion across from her. "Sure, whatever."

They sat in silence as Clarice slowly sipped her drink, stopping every now and then to re-examine the swimming amber swirls in her glass.

_Whoa, hey, that blob kinda looks like a bunny. That's odd, it looked like a buffalo three seconds ago…_

If her companion felt any impatience, it wasn't evident. As the last drop went down Clarice's throat, a hand reached forward and moved her other glasses out of her reach.

"I think that's quite enough for now."

Something seemed to be wrong with Clarice's hearing. The voice changed every second from silky smooth, to raspy, to throaty and deep without warning. Her vision was still performing butterfly strokes before her eyes so her companion looked to be nothing other than a fuzzy neon glow. A sickly smile appeared on her face. "Do I know you?"

"We--I have known you for quite a while."

"What d'you mean, you? I thought we had a mutual agreement, ya know, quid pro quo and that whole show."

"Ah, I see." The voice paused for a moment, considering what to say next. "Would you mind stepping outside for a moment? It is oppressively hot in here."

"Really? Well, actually I thought it was kinda nice, ya know. See, it's kinda cold outside and I don't think I wanna get cold cause that'll be bad for me. I know you don't really care but…" Clarice stopped talking and realized that she had completely lost herself.

"Hmm…exactly how many drinks have you had tonight, Clarice?"

"Dunno. Not enough yet, let's go get another…"

"Okay, okay, we'll go."

Clarice felt herself lifted to her feet. She got her feet under herself, but the moment her companion let her go; she nearly fell flat on her face. A sigh of exasperation and then Clarice was leaning on a shoulder, shuffling along.

"Did I just fall?"

"Almost."

"Okay. Are we going to the counter?"

"Maybe. How many fingers do you see?"

"Uhhh…four, no…three, oh this is stupid."

Clarice was so preoccupied trying to control her vision long enough to count the number of fingers in front of her face she barely registered the swing of the door or the cold night air suddenly hitting her face.

"I perceive that now would not be a good time to talk about your current situation."

Whoa, slow down. That went by way too fast. She took several seconds to comprehend it all, but when she did she was mad. "What's to talk about? The idiotic police have no idea what they've got on their hands. There's a madman out there somewhere who seems to have developed a sick fascination with you and wants to imitate you in any way possible."

"Do you think he's doing a pretty good job?"

"Phhh…on the surface yeah, but I don't think he has any idea what he's dealing with."

For the first time, Clarice realized that the neon lights of the bar had long since faded away. Oldies from the jukebox were no longer saturating her ears and there were no sounds other than their own breathing and the sound of their feet shuffling through dead leaves scattered across the sidewalk.

"Wait a minute, where are we?"

There was no answer.

"Hey, hey I asked a question, where are we?"

The voice, now soft and silky. "Somewhere safe, Clarice. Actually it is my opinion that you have no idea what _you're_ dealing with and that you never have."

Suddenly, ripping pain as a blow landed in her stomach. Clarice gasped, clutching her stomach, winded. She waved her hands around wildly, trying to claw at something, anything. Something was clamped over her nose and mouth now. And when Clarice was next able to draw a breath, she inhaled chloroform.

Blood-red circles swarmed into her field of vision and slowly began to spin, faster and faster. A rolling scarlet whirlpool like an exploding supernova with a black hole already forming at the center. The compress over her face pressed down and fingers of darkness flicked away the scarlet and then she was falling down, down, down…

"A pitiful copycat, eh? We'll see about that, Clarice Starling. But you were right, they _should_ have watched for Baltimore…"

It was the last thing she heard before hitting the ground and continuing to fall through and out into the endless darkness.

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When Clarice came to, she was sitting upright and bound tightly to what seemed to be a chair. A rag was tied around her eyes. Her head was tilted slightly upward and when she tried to straighten it, she found that she could not. There was some unidentifiable wetness on her face. That was all she comprehended before waves of sickness from the combination hangover, chloroform and other drugs seized her stomach and seemed to push her entire body out of her mouth from the inside.

It was all she could do to turn her head slightly sideways to avoid choking on her own vomit. She retched until there was simply nothing left in her body to come out. She wrinkled her lips, unable to lift her hands to wipe her mouth. Her head was spinning like crazy again; she felt like she had just regurgitated several organs.

_Look at me. Pitiful, tied to a chair and…where am I?_ Clarice suddenly remembered that she had heard none of her sickness hit the floor. Then she noticed that something was held under her jaw and a filthy smell assaulted her nostrils. She nearly jumped out of the chair when the voice came again, this time from just behind her ear. Without the influence of alcohol, the voice sounded clear and crisp to her ears and…no, impossible.

"I was afraid you would never come round, you've been out for almost 16 hours." The voice seemed to move away, growing fainter. Clarice heard a clink as the bowl was set down on some table. Then the sound of footsteps and the voice grew stronger until it was right in front of her. "I was afraid you'd had a fatal reaction to the chloroform, please forgive me. I could never live with myself if you had died before we even got a chance to meet each other."

Clarice's head stopped spinning for the moment, and she could finally get some sense of her position. She was indeed sitting in a chair, and by the cramps in her lower back, had probably been sitting there for several hours. She was bound to the chair by her ankles, her knees, her wrists, her elbows, her waist, and her neck with thick rope, which explained why she could not tilt her head.

Clarice had a sudden, idiotic flashback to junior high and reading the _Chronicles of Narnia_. 

_Prince Rilian was bound to the silver chair an hour every night, helpless, unknowing, and afterwards forgetting that only in those fleeting moments was he free of the enchantment that had controlled him for ten years._

"Clarice, do attempt to be polite and grace me with an answer."

"Don't call me Clarice. Who are you? You aren't Dr. Lecter." _But you sure as hell sound just like him…almost_.

"An astute observation, Clarice. A shame that it took you so long to realize it. If you hadn't been drinking so much, you might not be in this position right now. Then again, you should have also realized never to leave a drink unattended, you never know what someone would put in it."

A brief silence as Clarice comprehended the true seriousness of the situation. "What do you want with me?"

A merry laugh. "I think you know, Clarice. But I'll give you a hint, it's not for quid pro quo. I want you. I want you here and not meddling in affairs you have no business with."

Clarice twisted her head against the rope with all her might so that she was looking directly toward the voice. "You'll never get away with this. The FBI will be looking for me."

"Oh, is that what you think? Try again, Clarice. This is a most convenient way for the Bureau to let you disappear, quietly and without incident or investigation. I know of your reputation there and I know what you did to Hannibal Lecter."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

The voice came closer, it was right in her face now. "People say that you're in love. But it's so much worse than that, Clarice, you have no idea. You have done something unforgivable and now you will pay for it, Clariiiiccceeeeeee…" Her name was hissed slowly through clenched teeth.

And then the blindfold was torn off her face. Clarice closed her eyes tightly.

The voice, high and cruel now. "_Abre los ojos_, Clarice." No response. "Open your eyes now or I will staple your eyelids to your forehead, which do you prefer?"

Clarice slowly forced her eyelids apart. There was little light, but she could see that the room she was in was bare, except for that table behind her and the figure that stood before her. And as the figure slowly came into focus, Clarice gasped.

"You!"

Rachel Ariadne Cahlin laughed. Eyes that had previously been filled with crocodile tears were now triumphant. Her jaw was still oddly slack and twisted into an awkward position like the first time she had seen it, and Clarice realized that it had probably been broken sometime before.

"But you--you can't be--…"

Cahlin stopped laughing as soon as she had started and her eyes were now blazing with anger. "What? I can't be the one who committed several heinous crimes, one involving my 'best friend' just because I'm female? Watch yourself, Clarice. I don't think you want to piss me off anymore than you already have. You of all people shouldn't be so narrow-minded."

"That…that's not what—."

Cahlin ignored her and walked behind the chair. She picked up the bowl of sickness from the unseen table before walking in front of Clarice again. "Now don't worry. We'll talk again, maybe later when you feel a little less sick and less disruptive. Ta-ta for now."

The door closed and locked behind her.

Clarice struggled with her bonds for ten minutes before collapsing with fatigue. If what Cahlin said was true, it must be Monday afternoon by now, in which case, it would be 24 hours before anyone would start looking for her. She was strapped to a chair in a little concrete room with someone close by who wanted her dead or worse.

Where was she? She could sense water nearby, how much, she didn't know. She also had an odd feeling in the pit of her stomach. The last time she had felt so was when she had been atop the largest hill of the largest roller coaster in a local amusement park. She felt an odd rumbling from somewhere far far below ground.

"I just never get a break, do I?" she thought. Her neck ached. When she saw that there was nothing else in the room worth noting, she leaned her head back against the chair to ease the muscles in her neck. In doing so, her eyes looked up and at the ceiling.

Her breath froze cold in her throat and her heart skipped several beats. And in that moment, Clarice realized how little chance she stood of escaping with her life. From where it was nailed across the ceiling, the skin of Heather Levenson stared down at her with empty eyesockets, mouth twisted into a silent scream.

TBC

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A/N: "Abre los ojos" means "open your eyes" in Spanish and was the title of a very popular 1997 movie of the same name, and it was the inspiration for the more well-known "Vanilla Sky". "Abre los ojos" is a twisted, dramatic, arthouse movie playing upon preconceived notions of dreams, love, and desires. I *strongly* recommend it.


	3. Discoveries

**Labyrinth of the Burning Heart**

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A/N: Many thanks for the kind reviews everybody! As stated before, this is one monster of a story. We offer no promises, no perfect endings…just an assurance that this will be one hell of a ride. Make sure your seat belts are securely fastened! ;) *psst, Lu, you want to rethink those halos?*

Chapter 3

Discoveries

Thursday, August 9, 2001

Special Agent Clint Pearsall stared hard at the sheet of paper he held in his hands. His eyes skimmed over the words, not really reading them before setting the paper down and taking a deep breath and letting it out in a huff. He should report the news, he was bound by the law to do so. And yet…

For all the time Pearsall had worked at the Bureau, no one had ever caused as much trouble for them as Starling. She had the bad habit of sticking her nose where it didn't belong and flouting orders on a whim. Pearsall had always disapproved of her actions, knowing it would eventually lead to her demise, if not by his hand than by another. And it infuriated him that she would never tell anyone of her intentions. Pearsall firmly believed that Starling knew more about that night on the Chesapeake than she was claiming.

Pearsall set the paper down on his desk and rubbed his temples. "And now you're in a real dilemma aren't you, Starling?" He picked up the phone and prepared to dial the director. His finger hovered over the last number for a second before he slammed the phone down.

He looked at his watch. It was almost time for lunch. Pearsall picked up the sheet of paper and stuffed it underneath a pile of books. He'd deal with it later. He got up from his desk and left his office, taking his water bottle along to refill.

Pearsall stepped out of his office and turned to lock the door when a hand fell on his shoulder. He turned to see the thin, wiry man standing beside him and inwardly recoiled.

"Trudell. How nice to see you again," Pearsall said in a voice that could have chilled an Eskimo.

The wiry man grinned, with a mouth full of yellowed teeth. He had a face that would have fit better on a rat. "Likewise, Clint. And remember, it's Bob to you."

"I'm flattered. Now, if you will excuse me…" Pearsall turned and started walking down the hall.

"Whoa there now, Clint. I just want to talk for a minute." Trudell fell into pace beside Pearsall. "How's the Lecter case coming?"

Pearsall stopped in the middle of the hall and turned to face Trudell. When he spoke again, it was not in answer to his question. "Who was the weasel who let you in this time?"

The man laughed, "Clint, sometimes I fear that you have too low an opinion of me. I have my own ways to get in."

Pearsall grabbed Trudell's collar and pinned him up against the wall. "I have my ways, too, BOB. And I could have you arrested right now for trespassing."

"Whoa, whoa now buddy. I'm just trying to help you out here."

"You print trash, Trudell. And not only that, but you actually have the nerve to come around here and ask us to _help_ you."

"Now remember, Clint. I'm clean now, or have you forgotten?"

Pearsall released his collar. "Clean as mud, Trudell." Pearsall walked over to the door that led to the break room and opened the door. "Don't ever let me catch you around here again." The door slammed behind him.

Robert Trudell walked over to the door and peered in the window. Pearsall was getting a cup of coffee from the cappuccino machine with his back to the door. Trudell stepped away from the door and walked a few steps down the hall. He turned and looked back the way he came.

Trudell could smell a story almost as well as his predecessor Freddy Lounds. He could also sense when someone was hiding something although Pearsall had practically been waving the red flag right underneath his nose. Trudell straightened his rumpled collar and began walking toward Pearsall's office.

Many writers at _The National Tattler_ feared how the loss of Freddy Lounds would affect their popularity. When it came to finding stories, he was the best, as nobody cared how he gained his information. Nobody had been willing to fill his shoes until Trudell had signed on with the paper and proved to be as talented, if not more so than Lounds.

Trudell had the privilege of covering all the stories on Hannibal Lecter and more recently, Clarice Starling as well. His stories were devoured by the hungry media and he became a bit more than a thorn in the FBI's side.

A few weeks ago, _The Washington Post_ had hired him, much to the chagrin of the FBI. Now he had bigger jobs and more access to information although the Bureau did everything possible to keep him out. Nothing they did was ever enough as Trudell was bullheaded and relentless to an extent belying his meek appearance.

Trudell stopped in front of Pearsall's office door. He tried the knob and was surprised to find it unlocked. He laughed to himself as he entered the darkened office. "Bob, this is your lucky day. They won't be able to get you for breaking and entering now."

It took him less than a minute to find the sheet of paper Pearsall had stuffed under a pile of books.

_"Special Agent Clarice Starling has failed to report to work since Friday, August 3. Memphis police can offer no assistance. Please advise."_

Trudell muttered, "Oh yes. You've hit the jackpot now, Bob. Oh yeah…" He clutched the paper to him, cherishing it as if it were beaten gold.

----------------

The side of the duplex that belonged to Clarice Starling was in shambles. Piles of paper, books, and magazines were laid out on the floor recklessly; some of them half-open or fallen closed with a folded page in the middle, having been pushed off the desk in senseless rage. Chairs had fallen over, clothes torn out of the closets and thrown onto the bed in a disordered mess. Not a single object in the room remained in its original place.  
  
In the midst of all this chaos, stood Ardelia Mapp, raging, fuming against everything that stood. Dressed in her pajamas, she had been up since 6 am, searching Clarice's side of the apartment for all it was worth. She had called in sick from work and since early dawn, had been seeking tirelessly and endlessly, taking a break only to eat or drink something, only to start ripping the room apart even more vehemently than before.  
  
She continued furiously, taking no time to stop and breathe, her whole being entirely concentrated on one thought, one last straw of hope she had grasped, and held onto for dear life: _A note…A note, however small it might be. Anything to tell me where she went, anything to tell me where she is now. Please, God, let me find a note somewhere in here, please, please…_  
  
It was her last option, before the inevitable one…and that was reporting Special Agent Clarice Starling to the authorities as a missing person.  
  
Four full days had passed since her telephone conversation with her best friend and roommate of seven, eight years, and this had been the first time in all these years that Clarice had stayed away without as much as a call, a message telling her she was okay.   
  
It worried Ardelia out of her mind. She knew Clarice had not changed so much in the past month…alright, maybe a little. Maybe her countenance had hardened and her heart embittered over the disappointment she'd suffered in the Bureau…her former great love, the F.B.I. Either the shield over her heart had grown stronger or else she had just gotten better at faking happiness.  
  
She was angry with them and had every right to be. Ardelia found her hands clenched to fists with her knuckles turning white just at the thought of how they'd played her. How they'd used her, her extraordinary intelligence and insight to their own advantage, and now, when she needed their help the most, turning her away and tossing her aside like chaff without so much as a second glance.  
  
And yet, for Clarice to just vanish into thin air like this…what had been her last words to her again? _Tell them I won't be at work until Tuesday._ No goodbyes. Clarice hated goodbyes.  
  
_Well,_ Ardelia thought to herself stubbornly as she went over every inch of the room for the umpteenth time, still looking for any kind of clue Clarice had come home at all, _it's Thursday now and she didn't show. Thursday night and no Clarice. No Clarice._  
  
The thought made her sick to her stomach. The poor girl. Hadn't she been through enough? First, this whole deal with that madman, Lecter, then all the Evelda Drumgo crap, then Lecter again and now this? Some pathetic copycat killer on the loose and they send over their favorite agent Starling to clear up the mess? Real nice of 'em. Assholes.  
  
Still didn't change anything about the matter at hand, though. Ardelia sighed, knowing even as she opened the drawer of the nightstand that it had been emptied and nothing could be found in there. The whole room breathed Starling's absence. It suffocated Ardelia to the very core.   
  
Every drawer had been opened, even those that were supposed to have been locked, every corner had been checked and re-checked, one word that could have rewarded a possible clue, any indication to Clarice's whereabouts of the moment searched for endlessly.   
  
And all to no avail. Ardelia still had absolutely no idea where Clarice had gone. Or rather, where she was now.   
  
_God *damnit*,_ Ardelia thought, grasping a handful of hair as she shoved everything off the tabletop like she was clearing a chessboard. _Where the fuck are you, Starling? This is no time for games. _  
  
And in her fury, turning around in the corner of the room holding a candlestick she had just picked up from the table in her right hand, she accidentally smashed the mirror that hung on the wall on her right. The mirror fell in shatters and the pieces fell to the ground with a rattling noise, along with Ardelia's shivering body, as the weight of her realization made her knees give way.  
  
At first, on Sunday afternoon, when Ardelia had come home to an empty house, she had figured Clarice had gotten herself drunk somewhere in Memphis. Her friend's refuge in alcohol had increased severely over the past month. Many times had she turned the key in the door of their duplex to find Clarice spread out on the floor – either puking the remnants of her dinner out on the carpet, or shivering in her shell of oblivion as Ardelia then picked her up from the floor and laid her to rest.  
  
She knew whatever demons were haunting her now, Ardelia could not fight for her – though she wished Clarice would confide in her. It seemed sometimes as though Clarice had shared more of herself with the Shrink of Doom himself, Doctor Lecter, than with her, her best friend. The most disturbing thing about this notion was that it could very well be true.  
  
Ever since they had returned her friend to her after the dreadful Chesapeake accident, Clarice had…changed. She was no doubt a shell of her former self, and yet she kept on going. Biting her lip in bitter determination as she became the Bureau's coffee girl. Keeping a smile plastered on her face and an amiable tone in her voice as she politely rejected all persistent reporters and TV talk-show hosts begging her for an exclusive, the inside scoop on the media's – and audience's – favorite Cannibal.   
  
It drove Ardelia crazy just thinking about it, all the media publicity and TV exposure that Clarice had suffered. And yet the girl kept on smiling. Kept on working, showing up whenever the people in charge asked her to. She was completely unbreakable, it seemed…even if Ardelia sometimes had to sweep up the broken pieces that were Clarice Starling from the floor as she lay there crying, or vomiting, or both.  
  
And yet…it seemed likely, taking a look at the current state of affairs, for Clarice to have just had it with the world for awhile and take off to the horizon with nothing but the keys to her Mustang, her string of old add-a-beads – gold mingling with drilled tiger's eyes, two-and-three – and her loyal .44 pistol, the one sucker in this world she could count on…  
  
But it just didn't ring true. It just didn't hit home for Ardelia…there had to be another explanation. One she had not wanted to consider before smashing the mirror in the room, and in her mind.

Ardelia's strangled sob sounded nearly like a laugh as she quickly stifled her pain. She was kidding herself.  
  
No note was she going to find, not even if she turned out every drawer, every key, every damn penny on the floor. No Clarice was going to be hidden in any of the bedroom's closets, and no rattling of door keys would be heard in a matter of moments, as she came home from another long, boring office day at work.  
  
She was gone. Dead, lost, kidnapped – whatever happened to her, this was no accidental disappearance. Her best friend was in trouble, great trouble…she felt it with every trembling cell in her body. The fear that mingled with the worry electrified her mind, and suddenly, Ardelia found herself up on her feet again.   
  
_Now was no time for crying,_ she said to herself, as she angrily rubbed at the tears that happened to escape her eyes in those moments of despair on the floor. _You have to get yourself moving and help Clarice. The girl needs you, kid. You are all she has in the world, her only friend…_  
  
_Except a certain Doctor with a killer smile and venomous tongue_. Such she desperately tried not to add to her pep talk, but it was inevitable. As was the sudden tingle of jet black consternation creeping up her spinal column.   
  
What if Clarice had gone away…to _him?_ *With* him? The mother of all sins, _dear God,_ Ardelia prayed with all her mind, _don't let this be true, please. Let her not find sanctuary in a madman's arms, please God. Let her not be that far gone, please. _  
  
She collected herself resolutely after dismissing the depressing mind images of death and insanity, picking up her car keys from the bed as she made her way over the clutter on the floor to the door. Her mind was made up. No matter how long it took, she would drive over to Memphis tonight and find her answers and, if lucky, Clarice herself. She threw open her front door.  
  
The immediate flashing light blinded her wholly for a few seconds. When she was able to see clearly again, her mouth clamped shut from pure and utter shock. The place was swarming with paparazzi: TV, radio, magazine, freelance reporters clawing at her from every side, flashbulbs blinding her vision, microphones being shoved under her chin not so gently as the questions washed over her like surges of excessive exuberance.  
  
"Miss Mapp, can you tell us anything about the whereabouts of Special Agent Clarice Starling, who has been reported missing since Sunday, August 5 – "   
  
"Miss Mapp, is there any chance this disappearance may be linked to the re-entry of the notorious man-eating escapee, Dr Hannibal Lecter?"  
  
"What are your thoughts on the long-rumored romance between the former psychiatrist turned cannibalistic and your roommate?"  
  
"No comment," she was able to blurt out finally, having recovered enough from the initial shock to conjure up a reasonably stiff expression on her face.   
  
"No comment, no comment, no comment – " She urgently moved to her garage while avoiding as many camera eyes and hungry journalists with their presumptuous questions as she could. The walk to her car from the front door had never seemed quite as long, nor had the distance seemed this far. Every step, however hurried, was played in slow motion in her mind, too slow, she contemplated, and hurried her pace even more.  
  
Journalists, reporters, even nosy neighbors kept blocking her way, shouting questions at her all the way to her beloved Renault. Never finding the use of elbows more convenient than now, she pushed her way through the public of snooping onlookers, uttering a last, aggravated "NO COMMENT!" before slamming the door. Shut.  
  
_How does Clarice cope with all this bullshit? _Ardelia thought, safe in her car at last as she turned the key in the lock and the engine sprang to life. She drove past all news reporters as though her life would be at stake if she slowed down at all, almost driving over some of them, others flashing their photo-camera eagerly at the car windows, if just to get a snapshot of her shock-ridden face, with _What the fuck?_ written all over it.   
  
_Okay,_ her mind coped with what had just happened in its own rhythm. _So they found out about her disappearance. Big shit. Couldn't the big bosses have kept it quiet for awhile? They could've at least sent over some damn bodyguard or something._ After the initial shock had died down, however, her head was as clear and worried as ever, as she realized what this meant.  
  
_Oh God. So no one else has heard from her in four days either. This is bad. This is really really bad…_  
  
She had received a speeding ticket and evaded many more by the time she ended up back in office, rushing to her cubicle to start calling up people, fast, and in the meantime, start thinking on how she was going to do this.


	4. Siren's Call

**Labyrinth of the Burning Heart**

------------

Chapter 4

Siren's Call

Thursday, August 9, 2001: Somewhere in the western U.S.

The public bathroom, used by all men after their hours of exercise, was bright and warm and the walls a complexion of gray-blue that was almost the exact shade of Clarice Starling's eyes. Over the brittle ventilation, air moved in a soft mist, flooding from the open door of the indoor sauna.  
  
Out of one of the shower rooms came a figure, a man unlike any man. He had a towel wrapped around the waist, covering his private parts as he stood in the doorway, unmoved by the thought of time or haste. This man had all the time in the world.  
  
The man was small, slender. His posture was that of a dancer, graceful and in control, demanding of a certain amount of respect and courtesy should someone consider commencing a conversation with the aforementioned. His back and neck straight and taut suggested a person highborn. He stood very still, his head tilted slightly to the side like a bird's. That simple allusion to innocence was lost in the darkness that were the eyes.  
  
Yes, his eyes were what drew attention. In fact, attention was sucked into these maroon orb whirlpools in the center of the man's face and quickly redirected upon the observer in a gaze that pierced flesh, breath, and bone.  
  
Nothing of that face might interest a passing onlooker except the eyes. The nose slightly crooked, perhaps because of the small doses of collagen injected into it over the years. A sleek, dark head with his short hairs slicked back upon the skull. Skin not possessing yet an elderly tint of pale gray, but tanned in the sun and attended to with exemplary oil and cleansing foam.  
  
Focus on the penetrating eyes, then. Deep and dark maroon they are, at the center of each pupil two dots of blood red. There is a rare sensation in the lower area of your abdomen as into these eyes you look, you fall, and the face of the Devil is staring straight at you.  
  
This man stood motionlessly in the doorway, breathing in the atmosphere of the place he had occupied for the past month or so. This man, Dr Hannibal Lecter, known man-eating murderer of at least fourteen that the authorities know of.   
  
He moved then, and as he did we could see the brace on his left hand, the metal brace, indicating an apparent fracture of the bones. He moved carefully, making sure his injured hand did not come into contact with the exercise equipment as he made his way across the room, having now left the showers.   
  
He gathered his clothes from their hook on the wall: a trench coat and a dark suit of fine cut material, probably Italian. Involuntarily, he remembered the hideous prison clothes he had been forced to dress himself in for almost a decade. A tilt of the head is enough to dismiss the unpleasant recollection from his mind. That time was long ago.  
  
He was a free man now. The only task at hand now was for him to recover his former physical strength, namely by fixing his hand in a proper manner.  
  
In the damp room Dr Lecter revealed to no one his winning smile. They would never find him here. He had time now. He had all the time in the world.  
  
Hannibal Lecter worked hard at his physical therapy. His hand had been recovering nicely over the past month; his bones having been re-set by the best surgeons available in the country. From then on, Dr. Lecter had been busy…performing exercises three times daily that would help his hand to regain its prior strength. Fortuna, the goddess of chance was on his side: a month had he spent at this local facility now and he had not yet been discovered.   
  
Of course, he had taken to heart his personal safety would not be put at risk this time.   
  
His head was still desperately wanted on most everyone's silver platter, from Washington to the other side of the ocean, where the Italian police craved revenge after the brutal murder of their inspector. So what if they'd have rid themselves of Pazzi eventually anyway.   
  
People felt unsafe and tourism deflated drastically. If they could present to the scared tourists the capture of the notorious Doctor Hannibal Lecter, the blood pressure of numerous people working in Florence would drop considerably.  
  
Since his surprise visit to the States, security around the borders had heightened also, to the point of no escape. That is, to anyone other than Dr Lecter.   
  
Because of this inconvenient turn of events, the rather offbeat location for our refined Doctor. Because of the aforementioned reasons, the revalidation clinic miles away from inhabitable land, where no living soul would think to search for Hannibal Lecter, wanted criminal with a million-dollar prize tag attached to his name alone.   
  
He had taken the natural precautions in creating his new identity; matching credit card service etc. Everything was waterproof in case they would for some reason decide to run a background-check on him.  
  
His new identity had been effective. To the nurses and other staff members, he was known as Dr. Howard G. Washington. Fifty-seven years of age, widowed, dividing his time between working at the office in hometown Philadelphia and spending time at his luxurious vacation house in St. Tropez.   
  
Smiling to himself over his own brilliance, Dr. Lecter, dressed now, made his way across the hallway to the great wooden door just around the corner. The name on the door read, _Dr. N. Bondelier_, written on the copper plate in fine, even, golden letters.   
  
He raised his good hand and knocked, twice, not loud enough to startle yet clear enough to hear. In a warm and harmonious voice the physical therapist's voice flowed from behind the wooden door, inviting him inside. "Come in."   
  
Dr Lecter turned the doorknob and, opening the door far enough so he could enter, was immediately welcomed in by the woman's friendly smile. Her eyes wrinkled at the corners when she smiled, but for some reason it made her look younger than she really was. "Doctor Washington…please, do come in."  
  
At 37 years of age, Nicole Bondelier looked nothing like her contemporaries. The reason for this was to be credited to top-rate plastic surgeons, who had lifted her facial features a couple years back. It was time for another, though: she did not like the creases around the eyes in the very least.   
  
Dr Lecter, of course, noticed her facelift, as he noticed everything, and smiled inwardly. _How very droll. The tedious desperation of today's women to look as untainted and spotless as could possibly be, to the very extent of taking a knife to your face to ward off the attacks of age, an ironic reasoning to no end. Yet another woman desperate to catch a man, before the god-feared forties strike._  
  
He felt a twinge of pity for her, as well as an odd feeling of kindness, which he always felt towards people who just couldn't help being who they were: boring individuals, their lives printed visibly upon their flawless features. _Time engraves our faces with all the tears we have not shed.*_  
  
"Have a seat," Nicole Bondelier beckoned with her right hand for him to take a seat opposite her. As always, Dr. Lecter kept his feelings off his visage, and took the seat she suggested with the usual grace of carriage. Nicole had to catch her sigh of appreciation in her throat. This man was certainly one of her more attractive patients.  
  
"Well, Doctor," she began explaining the procedure of today to him, "I thought perhaps today we could start with the usual roundup exercises, then the hand massaging and then crunches. I'm afraid I don't have a rubber ball for you to work with as of yet, so we'll have to begin with regular objects like, for example, a glass of water…"  
  
When she talked like this, Dr Lecter reflected, the tone of her voice was very casual and airy, on the verge of irritating to some degree. She was like a fluttering bird, determined not to fly around the same subject for too long, perhaps afraid to grow attached to a certain something, someone…?   
  
He had already noticed the muscles in her cheek tensing and the faint blush on both when he had introduced himself to her two weeks ago, when therapy had begun. _A slight crush, I see…?_ Finding the matter to be interesting, Dr. Lecter silently encouraged her advancements, thinking maybe in the meanwhile he could have some _fun_ with her.  
  
He leaned across the desk separating the two chairs to pat her hand with his undamaged palm, lightly, assuredly, and even producing a genuine smile while doing so. She had soft, delicate hands. "I'm sure that whatever you have planned for me this afternoon, the outcome for the both of us will be…rewarding."   
  
Nicole flushed and pulled her hand from his, muttering an "I'm sure" for courtesy purposes only, unsure herself of why she should have such a reaction to such a minor touch. However, it seemed to have slipped the Doctor's attention, or he was kind enough not to comment in regard, as he immediately started preparing himself for the exercises.  
  
"Well . . . shall we?" he spoke in his slightly raspy voice, while he rolled up his sleeve.   
  
Dr. Nicole Bondelier relaxed visibly in her armchair, and while her lips formed instructions for the patient on automatic pilot her mind began to wander.   
  
He had well-proportioned arms: shapely, yet not overbuilt. She wondered how a man with so robust a body would have injured himself so severely, crushing his hand. Had he dropped a heavy weight on it? She couldn't tell for sure. . . but it looked more as though he'd tried to pull his hand out of too small a space. . .   
  
Dr. Bondelier works with many patients day in day out. And as is the case for so many thirty-something women out there, her career is her life, and she does not favor one patient over another. This was her eighth hand therapy session with this specific gentleman…Doctor, she corrected herself. It came in handy at times, that he was a doctor himself, for she didn't have to explain all the medical procedures used with him to any extent.   
  
He had been courteous and cooperative with her, always kind and undoubtedly intelligent, and, despite Nicole Bondelier the physician, Nicole Bondelier the woman found herself intrigued by this puzzling individual, and she wondered if he would consider it rude should she ask how he had gotten his injury. For now it seemed wiser not to ask, rather tune it out and admire that worked body from afar instead.  
  
Dr Lecter's arm muscles worked hard under his skin as he stretched and relaxed his hand, his arm, his upper body. Every patient was given the same routine exercise schedule and his were no different from other men coping with a similar hand injury. Yet not every man looked as good as this mysterious gentleman . . . Without meaning to, Nicole released a quick breath through her teeth.  
  
He caught her appreciative eye and before she could blink and turn away, he had winked at her. Playfully, kindly, perhaps . . . encouraging? She couldn't tell, it had happened too quickly. But the fact that the hairs on her neck stood on end and on her arms rose goosebumps would suggest otherwise. _That man certainly has a way of making a girl's fur crackle…_  
  
"Dr Washington," she suddenly heard her own voice say, "I have been wondering about this ever since we were introduced to one another two weeks ago . . . how _did_ a man like yourself injure his hand so severely? You do not strike me as the reckless type…"   
  
_How terribly tacky. Not to mention STUPID!_ Nicole Bondelier felt a sudden urge to start banging her head into the oaken office door. The unpleasant emotion of embarrassment spread its magic touch all throughout her body, and she felt her face grow red-hot. _Fool, fool, fool._ He would turn and leave the room now, certainly offended by her sudden, rude, inquiry. And this was so very much against her principles…!  
  
But Dr Washington did not seem to be angered by her blatantly stated question. He made no reference to it at least, continuing his early workout, stretching the separate muscles in his hand with infinite care while keeping up polite conversation.  
  
"As a matter of fact, I am not. Reckless, that is. However, I must say the circumstances in which my accident transpired are most…unusual."  
  
"Oh?" Again, her voice ran on with her suddenly fluttering heart as though it had a life of its own. Excitement and curiosity began to overrule manner and she found herself speculating the cause of his injury. "To be honest, Doctor, from the looks of your hand I'd say you dropped a 100-pound weight upon it or something of the manner."

Dr Lecter smiled kindly, though he was becoming rather annoyed with her. She certainly wasn't exceptionally humorous. "I can't say that was the case."  
  
"Well, what was it then?" All courtesy forgotten, Nicole questioned him further. "Do you chop wood? I know some men who do. Did you accidentally drop the handle of the ax on your hand?"  
  
At this, Dr Lecter looked up from his still stretched arm, a look of puzzlement traveling over his face. _Not altogether untrue… except for the setting._ Getting bored with the conversation and not liking the direction it was taking, he decided to oblige her with a marginally true answer. "A slight disagreement with a previous significant other…"   
  
Despite strenuous effort not to, Dr Lecter found his mind wandering back to that 4th of July evening on the Chesapeake. Through the hallway of his memory palace rang suddenly the snapping sound of the handcuff closing around his wrist. Captured in a moment of unforeseen weakness, his freedom was laid into the open hand of the 'previous significant other' when his desire had, for once in his life, conquered reason.   
  
He shook his head stubbornly like a child, wanting to rid himself of the haunting memories, but his mind did not oblige. Without any intention of his own, the image of Clarice Starling's inexpressive face formed itself on the gray-blue wall he was facing in his mind's eye, in the room especially designed for her… inexpressive, with the exception of a single tear shed in a time of no time, when his lips had so softly, so gently met hers.  
  
Had it not been for Nicole Bondelier, Dr. Hannibal Lecter would have been trapped until the end of eternity within that moment of at the same time, infinite bliss, and in the next instant, the predictable betrayal of the one woman he had ever known was an equal match to him.  
  
As it was, no thin, high, piercing scream erupted from the Doctor's throat when he felt as though the walls would crack if that tear on her face would be shed one more time, for Dr. Bondelier's voice spoke out from the present, ordering him back into his body.  
  
"Oh my! She did _that_ to you?" came the blunt reaction of the 37-year old physician. Doctor Lecter flinched at the impudence of her reply, and with that, the door to that room in his mind where the walls were an exact replica of the color of Clarice Starling's sad, blue eyes was closed instantly.  
  
"I'd rather not talk about it," came forth his answer, with a voice like frozen mercury. The muscles under his jawbone twitched dangerously, and Nicole Bondelier understood. "Oh, of course, of course, Dr. Washington. Of course."  
  
Silence. Dr Lecter went on warming up and, distracted but observant, Nicole watched on. It wasn't until several moments later, the doctor chose to speak again.  
  
"Dr Bondelier, I would like to ask you if you have any idea how long it might be before my injury is healed and I can take my leave."  
  
_Oh, is he in a hurry to get out of here?_ Determined to keep him here, in her office, where she had a good view of his body, and even more desperate to keep the conversation going, Nicole Bondelier once again found herself once again bluntly probe her patient. "Doctor Washington, I hope your stay with us doesn't conflict with any plans you might have had for the summer?"   
  
_Oh, too personal a question. *Again*._ She regretted the configuration of her question instantly, having irritated him only a mere minute ago and this was not so far removed from her previous words, on the scale of stupidity. But now the word was out, she could not restate it, and he'd have to correct the situation, if she hadn't already mortally offended him.  
  
Dr Lecter paused for a moment with his stretching, turned and, once again, challenged her into meeting his eye. When she did there was a sensation of falling into a pit, pitch-dark and too close for comfort, yet at the same time his eyes were like two pools of black honesty, mirroring her anxiety and her need for a partner…did she, need a partner? It was confusing, and Nicole Bondelier could not stand to look into those eyes any longer.   
  
When she averted her gaze from his, the Doctor smiled, revealing his sharp white teeth to her bowed head. An unspoken warning, and he hoped she hadn't missed it this time around, for her sake.  
  
"Oh, but my summer is turning out to be…quite the interesting one, in fact. Surely, getting myself into the awkward position of receiving therapy is hard in a way…" When he casually shrugged his shoulders it almost seemed like a normal gesture. Nicole Bondelier found herself looking up again, into his animated face.  
  
"Yet staying in a place like this can have its advantages, too." …_Like the FBI having absolutely no idea of my current whereabouts,_ he added in his mind to the spoken sentence, and marveled in her incognizance of the man before her.   
  
"I see," Dr Bondelier offered, hoping he would go on talking. When he didn't, she took up conversation again, for some reason simultaneously fascinated and put off guard by this man. "I'm sure you did not plan this little setback Doctor, but if you say you are entertaining yourself here I will take your word for it."  
  
"There are always pleasant distractions." Was there a note of interest to be found in that metallic voice? Despite herself Nicole found herself looking for such a hint. "Such as?"  
  
She reminded Dr. Lecter of a child impatiently awaiting her after-dinner dessert. Well, why not oblige? "Such as yourself, for example." He smiled winningly at her, provoking an instant blush on her already rosy cheeks. The skin around her eyes wrinkled dangerously.  
  
"Surely I had not expected when I injured my hand, I would wind up in this clinic having this pleasant conversation with such a beautiful woman."   
  
_And surely I have imagined those words coming from his lips???!!!_ Nicole had to catch her breath as she realized he was openly flirting with her. Her heart rate climbed precariously and she was certain he could hear it from where he was exercising.   
  
She paid even more attention now to his well-toned arms and how dashing he looked when he smiled at her. The grin had not yet come off his face, though she couldn't possible make an accurate guess to the reason behind this.   
  
Grinning, Dr Lecter was wondering inwardly if the skin on her face would tear more easily under his Harpy, having been pulled back by the face-lift. He wondered if she would dare look at him with such an examining eye, no medical purpose behind it, if she only had one eye to do it with. He imagined those bedroom eyes staring dead at him while he ate her sweetbreads, drinking a nice white Batard-Montrachet.  
  
"I think I am done with the warm-up now, Doctor," he spoke tentatively to her, unsure if she wouldn't faint in her own office if he were to continue this moment of building tension to last any longer, even if he enjoyed the inward delectation the thought produced. "Perhaps it would be wise to start with crunches, now?"  
  
"First the massage, Doctor," Dr Bondelier stood up, finally able to move a muscle again, speaking conversationally with him while taking his hand. "I'll have to check if you did your work-out as properly as it looked, after all." '_ As it looked_'? What was _wrong_ with her?  
  
"And I'd say you have a pretty good idea of how I did my 'workout' today, Dr Bondelier." Oh, there came that blush again. She hated how freely her body always betrayed her around men she found arousing, but he only relished in the sight of her wordlessly.  
  
"Or if you are not satisfied, perhaps you would like to demonstrate how it should be done, the next time? Perhaps tonight, an extra session, a little more private, Miss… Nicole, is it?" My, that was straight to the point! It didn't get more obvious than that.   
  
"Nicole," she obliged willingly, barely managing to stifle a giggle. He was so charming! "And tonight would be just fine, should you feel the need for, as you say…an extra session." She winked at him now, and the winning smile she gained in return was all the confirmation she needed, even if he wouldn't come out and say it. Nicole assumed this man had not had sex in quite awhile and was simply being courteous in his wooing her.  
  
Absent-mindedly, she started massaging the hand with the inexplicable small scar on the side, while in her head she went over all the meetings scheduled for this evening after eight and to what day she could postpone them if Doctor Washington indeed decided to ask her out today.   
  
Also, she went over the long unused dresses in her wardrobe, which would be appropriate to wear, as well as the choice between lace or leather underwear. Gentle or rough? She could hardly wait to find out.  
  
Dr Lecter watched her as she massaged him, purposefully standing more than a few inches too close to him. He was surprised and a little appalled by how easily she gave off the vibe of availability to him. She didn't honestly expect him to mean a word of what he said, did she? It was merely fun…  
  
But a good tease, or perhaps, quite a good scare would teach this woman and her fellow kind how unwise it is to give yourself out to men, to patients, especially if your profession contradicts it. That was unmistakably rude…  
  
_How foolish and believing women of today are,_ the Doctor mused.  
  
Back to the present, the therapist's trained fingers were professionally exploring the resetting bones in his hand. Her fingers looked polished and clean. Soft, not yet bereft of all baby fat, smooth, and well-spaced around the palm… She had star-shaped hands. His breath stopped in his throat.  
  
Nicole instantly noticed the change in him but decided wisely not to comment on this. He appeared to be a private person, not too fond of lengthy inquiries not unlike herself: she had no plans of irritating him. Nicole Bondelier had taken a psychology course and her intuition was well developed, even if she sometimes could not point out in herself the exact reason for her acting and reacting to certain subjects or situations.  
  
Suddenly, she noticed a minor infection on his inner palm, right below the thumb. While this would cause no problems in therapy, she needed to make certain applications to it anyhow. A serious infection in this stadium of recovery would be disastrous.  
  
"Excuse me a moment," she murmured while leaving his side and stepping to the great wooden closet in the room. She removed from it a small phial, within it something resembling a sort of creamy substance. It was a paste form of Echinacea, and most appropriate for applying to the minor wound.  
  
She walked over to her patient and opened the phial for him to see. "Shall I rub it in, Dr Washington? I promise I'll be gentle…"_As I certainly *won't* be tonight, so watch it Doctor,_ she added in thought.  
  
"I'm sure you will be," Dr Lecter nodded, distracted still by his earlier discovery. He didn't have to struggle hard to maintain composure. . . so many women had star-shaped hands. . . if he just didn't concentrate on the thought perhaps the impending feeling of doom would also fail to be existent, the stirring shadows in his memory palace would fade back to nothingness. . . yet all hope was lost when he saw the extract of Echinacea.  
  
It was purple. Purple, purple. Purple…  
  
Black and red spots invaded his field of vision almost simultaneously with the glance at the purple flower extract, and he immediately began to shut all too familiar doors in his memory palace, quick, quick…  
  
His mind wandered across a common room. A fleeting thought made its way from an old encyclopedia into his ear. _Echinacea is a purple flower whose root is used for its medicinal properties…_ From the corner of the hallway he heard a faint screaming, a voice, young, female, crying.  
  
The bleeding deer began running through the halls of his memory palace, and he could not stop the footsteps in the snow from following it, the screaming in his ears and mind and soul growing ever louder and louder. . .  
  
He snapped out of his reverie to find Dr. Nicole Bondelier gently rubbed the extract into his skin. Purple into his skin, under his skin, Mischa under his skin, no, stop, stop…  
  
He had snatched his hand away from hers before thinking, a sharp flash of pain accompanying the move as he was not wearing his brace. Nicole immediately lunged forward and laid it back in place. "Dr Washington, you mustn't do that!" her alarmed, startled voice brought him completely back to the therapy room, and he saw her bending over him with wide, searching brown eyes.  
  
It was all too much. Dr. Lecter saw himself in those eyes and he could see the fear that was in him. He slammed the door soundly on that notion before it could become apparent to Nicole.  
  
Nicole the physician was laid aside as worry filled Nicole the woman's eyes. "Dr. Washington, is something the matter?"  
  
The screaming was no longer so loud in his memory palace now that her hands were no longer on his. He stepped back from the woman who reminded him of Mischa. The resemblance was only skin-deep. Only a few steps were sufficient.  
  
"Nothing, I just think that I've had enough…therapy for today."  
  
The worry faded from Nicole's eyes and was replaced with the familiar creases of courtesy and embarrassment. "That's fine, Doctor. Um, I was wondering if you would like to continue our session at some other time?" _Perhaps tonight?_ She added silently with her eyes.  
  
Dr. Lecter could feel that he had already left this room. He was out the door and hovering over the parking lot, packed full, as it was near midday, while his shell remained behind and made small talk with this woman. "I'm afraid I have other plans for tonight. Perhaps another future time."  
  
Even Nicole could sense the hollowness in his voice, the dry rattle of emptiness. "Dr. Washington, are you sure that you're feeling all right?"  
  
But Lecter had picked up his metal brace and was fitting it back onto his hand and slung his coat over an arm. "Goodbye Nicole. Thank you for your help." He wasn't sure if Nicole had caught his sarcasm, he was already out the door.  
  
Nicole stood there stunned. What had made him walk out like that? He didn't seem the type of person to lose control easily. One theory after another was turned over and rejected in Nicole's mind, and she was now more confused than ever. She felt a moment's concern for him.  
  
She walked back over to the table and picked up her clipboard. Half an hour before her next patient. Her finger wandered aimlessly over Dr. Washington's name on the sign-in sheet. Just another name, just another patient. She should thank him actually; there was now half an hour for her to reapply her makeup for the next patient.   
  
Nicole the physician's eyes wrinkled at the corners as she smiled, and it made her look older than she really was.

---------

* A quote by Natalie Clifford Barney, a controversial and somewhat scandalous author of Victorian America.


	5. Colliding Fates

**Labyrinth of the Burning Heart**

--------------

By Jstarz927 and Aine Deande

A/N: **Very important: Future chapters will be rated "R". Please change your settings to make sure you don't miss updates.**

Thanks to all who have read and reviewed so far.

Chapter 5

Colliding Fates

Clarice Starling had lost all track of time. She knew that she had been bound in the chair for a little over six hours after she awakened. She had the sunlight and her watch to keep track of time. More than half of that time had been spent staring desperately at the new ceiling decoration, her stomach twisting like wrung laundry. And then Cahlin had come for her.   
  
One snide remark was made about whether or not she had enjoyed her company before the rag was tied over her eyes again and a blade held under her throat as she was untied and led, stumbling through twisting, turning hallways. Hallways that varied greatly in the amount of light allowed to permeate the silent corridors. She felt that an immensely slow strobe light was flashing before her eyes as she passed through doors from light to darkness.  
  
In spite of her blindness, Clarice could feel the vastness of the hallways as cool air molecules bathed every inch of their skin as they turned one corner after another, sometimes backtracking before abruptly turning in another direction. She could sense great looming shapes on each side of the halls as well. They felt like statues or some sort of enormous furniture.  
  
_I must be in a palace, or one big-ass mansion._  
  
Perhaps Cahlin felt Clarice's hesitance as she took in her surroundings because the blade dug a little deeper into her flesh, urging her to walk faster. They walked for a moment more before Cahlin abruptly turned Clarice to the right and led her through a doorway.   
  
The door closed behind them and suddenly the world was plunged into darkness. This was not the dark of the asylum or the blackness of night. Clarice was once again groping blindly around in Jame Gumb's cellar as she walked through darkness that could be felt and smelt and tasted. It was living, this darkness; it grabbed for her with long, thin fingers.  
  
And Clarice could not help but notice the utter, undying silence. The strains of "Goodbye Horses" replayed as echoes in her mind, as did the screams and the slamming of iron-barred gates. She felt, rather than heard Cahlin's breathing on the back of her neck as she led her further into the darkness.  
  
How Cahlin knew her way, Clarice could only guess. The minute they walked through the darkness was the longest of her life and she wondered what the use of the blindfold was anymore. They stopped and Clarice could hear the clinking of metal as her right hand was cuffed to a wooden post. The blindfold was removed from her eyes and Cahlin walked away.  
  
"I suggest you get some rest," she stated simply as her footsteps died away, her voice reverberating off the ceiling of the apparently vast room. And once again Clarice was enveloped in the sound of silence.   
  
The utter panic that had been building in her chest burst out and her breathing quickened while her legs collapsed under her. The wooden post was short and she could only sink so far to the ground, which happened to be covered with lush carpet. Her heart, always sounding unnaturally loud in her ears, hammered away in her chest like an entire marching band. Her fingers dug into the carpet fibers.  
  
It was some time before Clarice discovered the bed immediately behind her. Her hand had been cuffed to the headboard the entire time. The sheets were silky under her touch and the curtains and tied up on either side. Without another thought, she crawled under the sheets and sank immediately into the more comforting darkness of sleep.  
  
Clarice Starling had lost all track of time. At first she tried to find out by turning on the light on her watch. But the tinny glow of the dial had seared her eyes like an explosion and she threw her hands over her eyes as dancing spots continued swarming her vision for long afterwards. After that, Clarice had simply lain in the bed, staring into the nonexistent ceiling and letting time flow past her as it wished.  
  
Cahlin came to her again minutes later and Clarice's eyes nearly died. She carried a small lamp in her hands, shaded and perhaps no brighter than a blacklight but to Clarice it was as bright as a star. She covered her face, hoping Cahlin would leave, but Cahlin hung the light on one end of the headboard and set something down in front of her before sitting back and waiting.  
  
After the five minutes it took for Clarice's eyes to adjust, her vision had returned enough to make out the dinner tray that had been set before her. Sandwiches, some cut fruit, and a drink. No silverware. She looked up to see Cahlin watching her steadily, her expression unreadable. Clarice finally began eating after figuring that if Cahlin wanted to poison her, she would have done so at the bar. The food was good and Cahlin sat as patiently and unemotional as a stone while she ate.  
  
As her hunger was satiated, Clarice began to feel more like herself and her eyes moved furtively around the room, taking in her surroundings. The dim lamp illuminated the golden and white sheets of the bed and the similarly colored clothes of Cahlin. The golden bracelets that Cahlin still wore glittered in the soft light. An ironic image of an angel came to mind. Clarice could see far enough up the opposite wall to make out some faded paintings before the rest of the upper room faded into blackness.   
  
The room was vast and opulent, but the air held the essence of loneliness, as if it had never been truly lived in at all. There were also darker impressions that tainted the air, and although Clarice could not place them now, she would recognize them later as death.  
  
Cahlin smiled slightly, not kindly. "Not too uncomfortable, I trust?"  
  
Clarice wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. The food had given her confidence and she felt more like herself than ever. "If you're going to kill me, do it now. Don't play around with me. Every movie villain that did that ended up dead."  
  
"My, my, you _do_ get to the point immediately. Is that what you think I am then, the monster? You might change your mind in the course of time. I will make you realize things that you have locked in your soul so tightly that even Hannibal… Lecter could not bare to yourself."  
  
The pause between first name and last name had been slight, and would have remained unnoticeable to anyone less attuned to his name. So, this Cahlin was on first-name basis with Lecter.  
  
Cahlin continued, oblivious. "You'll find out who the true monster is before all this is over. Who knows, I may even let you live… and now let me get to the point with you right now. Don't try to escape, you will die of hunger before you find your way out. And don't give me trouble, or you will strongly regret it. Behave just as a helpless victim should and the next few weeks might be less painful… not that I'm promising anything."   
  
And with that, Cahlin uncuffed Clarice's hand and, keeping the blade no further than an inch from her neck, led her toward a side door of the room, pushed her into an opulent bathroom and slammed the door.  
  
So passed the next few days. The only way Clarice could know that days had passed was Cahlin. Cahlin brought her a meal tray twice a day, sitting calmly as she ate before letting her use the bathroom. Sometimes, short but courteous conversations were held although Lecter was never mentioned again.  
  
"Have you killed anyone since LaVorste?"  
  
"No. And Helen was a mistake." Cahlin said it quickly as she'd rather not think about her. Clarice knew then that she had been wrong about the killer not knowing the victims.  
  
"Are you going to kill me?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"So why bother feeding me."  
  
"Death from starvation takes weeks. I don't have that sort of time."  
  
Which left Clarice wishing she had never said anything.  
  
Sometimes after Clarice had been cuffed again to the bed after using the bathroom, she would feel a needle enter her skin. She assumed that they were sedatives, as she fell asleep almost immediately after being injected. What she did not remember were the violent, shifting dreams that plagued her sleep afterwards. When she awoke they would slip from her mind as quickly as water leaking through her fingers.  
  
Clarice had long learned not to panic in tough situations, to lay low and wait for help.  
  
_But nobody knows where I am…and that's my own fault._  
  
-----------------------  
  
Silence. Silence, advancing slowly in a darkened room. A dark figure, standing in the doorway. Slowly, now. He flips on the light, lost in thought. Rubbing his temple gently, as his good hand closes the door behind him.  
  
It was a quiet room that Dr. Lecter entered. Lit by the headlamp he had taken the trouble of flipping on. Warm because of the temperature control the chambermaid had no doubt turned on. Appealing, for the candlesticks on the table had been lit, fresh flowers had been brought in by the cleaning maid, and the few personal touches Dr. Lecter had provided…But it was silent…silent as a graveyard. Perhaps. Dr. Lecter wouldn't know. He hadn't been to a cemetery for over ten years.  
  
Dr Lecter took off his trench coat with his usual grace- – gently now, he told himself, as he pulled down the sleeve on his injured arm, swung to face the desk to his right and checked the messages left for him. Actually, messages left for Doctor Washington, as his answering machine addressed him, as did everybody else.   
  
He listened as Nicole Bondelier rambled about scheduling a new appointment, asking him to call her back on what he assumed was her private number. He scribbled down a note or two on the notepad, and registered with approval a new bottle of Château d'Yquem that was positioned at the table, ice still cold and frozen. And all the while he was going through the steps of this routine, his mind was a blank draw.  
  
Nothing moved inside his memory palace. The curtains were drawn and all doors were ritually closed, barred against any thought that could interfere with the peace he had imposed upon his silent corridors. All that was left now was a faint, fragile screaming in the back of his head, and sometimes a shadow of purple was cast over the place like an eclipse of the sun.   
  
There was nothing else moving in his mind. Dr Lecter preferred it that way.  
  
He raised his injured hand to eye level, noting the spot on his hand where the Echinacea had been incompletely applied. There were still some traces of paste surrounding the infection and he rubbed them in now, rubbing out the essence of Nicole Bondelier at the same time.   
  
Dr Lecter drew up a chair next to the table and sat down, laying his hand in front of him. This appendage. This conglomeration of bone, muscle, and blood that he had willingly destroyed for her sake. So she would not be hurt, would be saved. The names of Clarice and Mischa had become even more inseparable in the month following the Chesapeake incident. Clarice and Mischa with those soft blue eyes ripping apart his soul…  
  
_Those blue eyes staring as he slammed their hands down together onto the neighboring table.  
  
"Above or below the wrist…Clarice? This is really going to hurt…"  
  
The slam of the cleaver into unyielding wood, a scream of horror, and then a silence more deafening than any sound perceptible to the human ear. Dr Lecter lifting his shining eyes to the distant, unconscious face of Clarice. No words were allowed to disrupt the exchange of his mutual pain and sorrow.  
  
Dr Lecter spread his left hand into a star flat upon the table. He brought the heavy cleaver handle down upon his hand again and again, feeling and hearing his carpals and metacarpals splinter and break. If his medical knowledge had served him well, he would have broken every single bone cleanly and neatly, thus allowing for the best chance at full recovery.  
  
He pulled his shattered hand carefully through the metal cuff and looked one final time upon Clarice. She would never realize, would never accept the truth. The feelings in the pit of his stomach, those that had allowed him to steal a single kiss from her, did not abate as he realized this. He raised his good hand and brushed a sweaty strand of auburn hair from her face and his lips touched her forehead lightly. He would continue to respect her, perhaps even love her, but would she feel the same way? The resounding sirens crept closer to the house. There was no more time to reflect on such matters anymore.  
  
He turned away from her and a drop of his sweat fell upon her cheek as he walked away. Or it could have been a tear._  
  
A shadow of a glimmer in Dr Lecter's eye as we return to the present. He looked back to his hand, echoes of the sirens playing over in his head. Clarice. There was time to reflect now, plenty of time, but it seemed as though he did not want this after all. His own heart's desire being as much a mystery to him as they were to the woman whose lips he had so tenderly kissed.   
  
She had held her incorruptibility before her as the armor shielding her in her quest for sanctity…whereas with him, his memories proved almost as helpful in that department. Denial was no longer just an option, it was self-protection. Fear of losing soon won out to fear of asking. And those bloody godawful memories…  
  
Today had not gone well. Today had not gone well at all. Dr Lecter silently berated himself for having acted so bluntly imbecilic, and in the company of someone else, and a woman... and a physician, no less! And he had allowed himself to become distracted at the mere sight of… of… He needn't recall what had transpired to know. Purple. Purple eggplant, purple, the color his Mischa had adored above all others. He _had_ been distracted… that simply wouldn't do.  
  
Whenever Dr Hannibal Lecter feels as though the walls of his memory palace might be buckling in on him, shadows of memories moving too close, the sound of a swinging axe advancing too intently. . . he performs a test. A test with himself, and the world, to see if all is still well in it. To see if the world had changed while he closed his eyes and lost himself in his past.   
  
Getting up swiftly from his chair, Dr Lecter moved to the sideboard, where he took one single white teacup from the counter. It was a plain teacup, nothing special about it. Property of the infirmary. That would do well. He needn't trash his own antique 30-piece china tea set.  
  
Dr. Lecter placed the teacup on the table. Pure white porcelain seemed to laugh mockingly at him from where it rested so peacefully. For now.  
  
In his mind's eye, Dr Lecter has already begun pushing the teacup over the edge. He watches as the cup falls off the table, to the floor, shatters, and he feels himself preparing to wait until it will fix itself back together.   
  
This won't ever happen, he knows. No chance to reverse time has been presented to him yet, no increasing order pointing the way of time to move. He has not yet bent the direction of time to his will. Entropy has not yet mended itself, and for now, the great astrophysicist Stephen Hawking's hypothesis stands as it is.  
  
Dr. Lecter stared at the porcelain, thoughts of Clarice and Mischa invading his mind beyond his aptitude to stop it. The swinging of the axe collided with the sight of Starling's tear, falling from her eye as it began its lonely journey down. If gravity could be dismissed, then, perhaps, that same tear could have moved up again, into Clarice's beautiful blue eye. If only time would reverse itself.   
  
Uncharacteristically hesitant, Dr. Lecter made no movement whatsoever to do as he planned. The teacup remained where it was, resting on the tabletop while mocking him with its wholeness, with its white perfection. White like Mischa's milk teeth, mocking him from the bottom of the pit…  
  
_NO!_ Suddenly, Dr Lecter found himself clutching the sides of the table with his incredible strength, clutching its wooden vastness with his good hand so tightly one might think he could break the wood by doing so. The other hand he pressed into the tabletop as though to imprint the impression of it in the unrelenting wood forever.   
  
His head shook ferociously with conceded effort. _Stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it..._ His heart hammered away at a rate of one-hundred-eighty-five, the timbre resembling in his ears, the stampede of a thousand deer.  
  
What torture must a man endure before he is freed from his demons? Piercing the air with a high-pitched, shrill scream, Dr Lecter pulled himself back to composure. Damp spots stayed there where his hand had clutched the table.  
  
Determined in the sudden change of mood to divert attention from this little scene, Dr Lecter grabbed the remote control laying on the stand next to the answering machine and switched on the television. Normally he wouldn't degrade himself to such poor, not to mention tedious modes of entertainment, but finding he had no choice but to silence the cries, he indulged himself in another boring late-in-the-afternoon story on beloved news channel CNN.  
  
_Yadda yadda yadda…President choked on a peanut. I could care less. Yadda yadda yadda…oh, the Winter Olympics. Very interesting, hmmm. Salt Lake City isn't too far from here… there'd only be about a million other faceless fools there, cramping into their seats for dear life to be able to see a thing of the event. And the masses call this entertainment?_  
  
Dr Lecter had never been too fond of the public's general opinion on how to be entertained, and usually marveled in the stupidity of today's men by ridiculing the covered stories into the ground where they belonged.   
  
He watched for awhile, boring news of today moving past him like a pleasant wind, his mind vaguely noting the parchedness in his mouth and how he needed to have a drink, when then noticed the teacup again. It hadn't moved since he had placed it there… then again, what had he expected?   
  
A flicker of a thought lit the outer corners of the hallway where he stood, pleasantly enjoying the scenery he was admiring through the open window. Tea. Well, there was a teacup right by his side after all, and he was thirsty…   
  
Thirsty. Teacup. Thirsty. Teacup. Tea would be sensible. He should do the sensible thing: make tea. Always a better option than simply letting the poor teacup crash onto the floor, that much was certain. And he would probably be unable to enjoy the exquisite taste of the Chateau d'Yquem, feeling the way he did… yes, tea would be fine. Plain, dull drink that could ease his wearied mind and saturate his parched throat.   
  
Dr Lecter stood up, moved to the kitchen, which took up an extra three square meters of the apartment he had been occupying for the last month or so. He had made himself as comfortable as possible, given the knowledge he would probably have to spend weeks in therapy. It took him no less than one-hundredth of a second to determine where the Earl Grey tea bags lay.   
  
Back to his chair at the table, several moments passed. Using his good hand, Dr Lecter stirred the tea absent-mindedly with a copper teaspoon. His thoughts were set on one conclusion, one realization… he had to somehow get his injured hand around the teacup.  
  
That would be his test for today. He hadn't done enough exercise in therapy today, thanks to his most irksome turn with the young, oblivious female doctor, and Dr Lecter was a man fond of routine and practice. It is only with practice after all that we perfect our ways, and Dr Lecter very strongly believed in this view.  
  
He took off the brace again and laid his hand flat on the table. Would it be strong enough? He fiercely hoped, no, _knew_ it so. Dr Lecter would never do something so foolish and reckless as ruin all that had been accomplished over the last weeks just because he was determined to have some tea. That wouldn't do. But his hand was fine. Jaw-line set in what some might recognize as a stubborn child's scowl, he tried to wrap his hand around the cup.  
  
_Oouch._ A slight crack could be heard in his index finger if one listened close enough, and Lecter's eyes closed for a mere nanosecond before he recollected himself. Apparently one of the little bones in his index finger, perhaps a carpal, hadn't healed as sufficiently as needed for the intense exercise after all. Careful, now…  
  
Struggling with himself as well as the teacup, Dr Lecter slowly worked all his fingers around the cup. Muscle by muscle, his hand took the teacup into a shaky, but determined embrace. He tested if his grip was fierce enough. Then, with effort that seemed beyond any normal man's capacity, he lifted the teacup from where it had rested on the table. Half-healed tendons and damaged neurons screamed in protest, but his grip did not decrease in strength.  
  
A look of triumph lit his features. He had succeeded. He had managed to do as he wished and his hand had cooperated nicely. Dr Lecter turned his hand and lifted the cup to his mouth so that he could sip his hard-won drink. Mmmm. Excellent.   
  
_"Clarice Starling missing..."_  
  
Freeze.   
  
The teacup fell out of his hand and shattered into pieces on the floor, broken white shards lying quiescent and still. It did not gather itself back together and jump back into his hand. Time had not stopped despite proof of the contrary when he heard the TV news reporter speak her name, and moved on as it ever did.  
  
Dr Lecter did not even grant the shards a second glance as he rushed over to the TV, turning up the volume rapidly with his good hand, as to not miss a word of the news. By now any doubt that might have led him to believe he had heard the name wrongly was dismissed, as a picture of little Starling was displayed in the top right corner of the screen, while the reporter read on about her sudden disappearance from the Bureau.  
  
His eyes focused on her face, sparks in the center of his orbs dancing as he held the image whole. Little Starling in her navy suit, holding up the badge she had finally earned. A broad grin plastered across her face. Holding up to the camera with such pride the symbol of the institution that would destroy her.  
  
"Special Agent M. Starling was rumored to have been investigating a series of crimes that are believed to be the work of known and possibly returned felon Dr. Hannibal 'The Cannibal' Lecter."   
  
Hearing the newsreader mention his name, Dr Lecter's keen ears and eyes concentrated on the news bulletin again. He raised his eyebrows in slight amusement as he watched the image of the reporter replaced by a full screen blowup of his mug shot. He stared into his own eyes that seemed to sneer from the screen.  
  
"A ten-year veteran of the Bureau, Agent Starling was last seen by Memphis police on Saturday, August 4. The spokesperson for the Bureau refused to comment as to why no apparent investigation has been launched into her disappearance almost a week ago."  
  
Dr Lecter let out a slight hiss through the teeth while the reporter continued rambling. "An informant with the 'Washington Post' has stated that foul play is suspected in the disappearance of Agent Starling, as it is well-known that a showdown between Lecter and Agent Starling occurred just last month on Chesapeake Bay…   
  
"Lecter is a still a fugitive from the law whose whereabouts are unknown. Although no ransom note has been received by the authorities, Agent Starling's best friend, Ardelia Mapp is still intensely concerned." The news program then showed a clip of Ardelia Mapp, stepping out of her house, reporters swarming the place like termites.   
  
The camera zoomed in on her shocked and then increasingly worried face. Dr Lecter could decipher rather than hear her mouth forming the words 'No comment, no comment, no comment' to every question asked, and the corners of his mouth turned up into an amused, albeit humorless smile. _Clarice chose her friends rarely, and well._  
  
"If you have any information as to the whereabouts of Clarice Starling or Hannibal Lecter…"  
  
Dr. Lecter needed to hear no more. He switched off the television and simply continued to kneel before the TV set, his maroon orbs staring out into vast space, seeing nothing.   
  
_Brave Clarice,_ he thought. His nostrils flared, as though expecting to pick up her undeniable scent of almond soap and crisp determination in the air.   
  
_What have you gotten yourself into now?_


	6. The Burning Heart

**Labyrinth of the Burning Heart**

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By Jstarz927 and Aine Deande

A/N: Intense violence ahead. You have been warned.

"It's all the _mirror, mirror on the wall because beauty is power the same way money is power, the same way a gun is power." Chuck Palahniuk, _Invisible Monsters__

**Chapter 6**

**The Burning Heart**

Friday, August 17, 2001: St. Louis, Missouri

Employee of the Year Harold Lowe tilted his head to one side, scrutinizing his reflection in his silver plaque. Using his fingers, he slicked a lock of greasy brown hair back behind his right ear. Lowe breathed on the silver-plating surrounding the words "...virtuous dedication..." and buffed the metal to a meticulous shine with an edge of his Armani custom-tailored sleeve.

Lowe had spindly limbs and pale brown hair and looked as if he had never fully recovered from his adolescent growth spurt. His resemblance to a parasitic insect had been brought up more than once by co-workers behind his back. Lowe made up for his seemingly weak appearance with a sharp mind and an even sharper tongue. That afternoon, Lowe polished the silver-plating of his award one last time and whistled as he packed his things into a handsome leather briefcase.

Heads turned as co-workers lifted their eyes to regard Lowe as he walked cheerfully past their cubicles. Whistling still with a light bounce to his step, acting as if he had never repeatedly cheated his customers nor bribed the CEO for his promotion. No problem there, Lowe had received all his money back with his award and then some. The eyes returned sullenly back to their respective computer screens. They dared not say anything.

Lowe halted for a minute before exiting the front door. "Been a pleasure working with you all. Tell the boss that I left early and have a nice weekend." He flashed a toothpaste-commercial white grin and shut the door behind him with a devilish spark in his gray eyes. It was only noon, plenty of time to make all the necessary preparations before tonight. And what a night it would be.

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The bar was a rowdy place. It was Friday night, barely 8 o'clock and the stools were already packed. The bartenders rushed to and fro between impatient customers amidst heavy metal ripping from the jukebox. A group of customers were crowded around a TV, watching a basketball game and roaring obscenities at the referee and at each other.

Harold Lowe wove his way through the sweaty masses, his gray eyes ceaselessly scanning the people around him, winking at every female he saw. He had changed into another suit jacket that he was more willing to spill beer upon. He paused for a few minutes before the TV, more preoccupied with the flabby viewers trading insults with each other than with the game. Quickly becoming bored, Lowe turned to walk toward the main counter.

He turned too quickly. There was a sharp gasp and Lowe reached out to steady the woman he had almost knocked over. "I'm so sorry ma'am. Are you alright?"

"Yes, yes, thank you for catching me." She brushed her hair from her face.

"No prob—" Lowe's words died on his lips as he saw the woman's face. Smooth golden eyes seemed to smile from carefully powered skin. The face was surrounded by a generous amount of curly red hair. A skintight tank top barely met the top of a pair of close fitting leather pants. The woman smiled slightly as Lowe did a double take. _Whoa, baby, have I hit the jackpot now._

He licked his lips and tried again. "No problem. Again, I'm so sorry…could I buy you a drink, you know, to apologize?"

There came that devilishly seductive smile again. "I'd like that." Then as an afterthought. "Thank you for your kindness."

Fifteen minutes later, Lowe and his newfound beauty sat at neighboring bar stools, still waiting for a martini. Lowe, who couldn't believe his good fortune, was chatting animatedly to her, not bothered by the wait at all. Who cared if this place had crummy service? So far, Lowe was doing all the talking, the woman simply smiled in all the right places, supporting her chin with one hand, or looked over Lowe's shoulder every so often for the bartender.

"…so I really don't have any family. My job is like my life basically; my co-workers all hate me, but that's just because they're jealous. Did I tell you that I'm Employee of the Year?"

The woman looked at him admiringly. "No, you didn't, that's great!" Her dazzling teeth as she grinned could have blinded someone.

"Isn't it, though? I've got my own office now and…" he patted his hip pocket, "I'm also $2000 richer."

The woman edged a little closer to him. "I bet you're so good at what you do! What exactly do you do?"

"Oh, this and that, nothing too interesting. Just doing my part to get by in this rat race." Lowe turned his head to see the bartender approaching. "Ah, it's about time. Yes, the martini's for the lady." He set the glass in front of her, noticing the bracelet on her wrist at the same time. He took her hand without asking her permission, caressing the slightly damp skin while fingering the bracelet delicately. "May I?"

She nodded and he slipped the bracelet off her wrist. He made a show of examining it admiringly. A thin band of smooth, unblemished gold, no visible marks of any kind. Lowe looked up at her and smiled. "Very pretty. Just like you."

She blushed furiously, the bracelet slipping from her fingers as he handed it back to her and falling onto the floor. "Oh, I'm such a klutz. Excuse me." She bent down to retrieve her bracelet.

As she lowered her head, Lowe regarded her rear with a grin and with his hand carefully removed a tiny plastic bag from his breast pocket. He poured the powder inside into the martini glass. A second's work with the stirrer and the powder dissolved perfectly, the drink once again innocuously still.

The woman's head came up again as she fixed the bracelet back onto her wrist.

"Sorry about that," she murmured, her hair falling delicately to the sides of her face as to hide the still lingering red coloring of her cheeks. Lowe watched the display with growing passion and he felt a familiar twitch in his groin.

As if suddenly remembering, he smiled broadly, saying, "Where are my manners? Harold Lowe is my name. And who do I have the honor of buying a drink for?"

She smiled slightly. "Ariadne."

A slight shadow came over Lowe's face. He hadn't been expecting that; the name didn't seem to suit her. There was something haunting and mysterious about it. For a split second their eyes met and the shadow darkened on both their faces. Lowe shook himself mentally. "Beautiful."

The shadow was gone. A shy giggle. "Thank you." She wrapped her hand around the stem of the martini glass. "To your health, Mr. Lowe."

Lowe watched her drink. "Harold, please," he said with a slightly twisted smile. _To my health indeed_.

Rachel Ariadne Cahlin sipped the drink slowly, making sure to pass the liquid to the sides of her mouth. The super-absorbent cotton tucked inside her cheeks did their job well, and not a single drop of what she rightly presumed to be a drug-laced drink passed her mouth. Not only did the cotton absorb the drink but added shape to her twisted jaw, allowing her face to look almost normal. She had also injected herself with an ample amount of Romazicon barely half an hour ago.  She would have to give herself repeated doses over the next few hours just to make sure she kept her wits about her. The drug had cost a small fortune to obtain, but money was not a problem. _He had seen to that._

Inwardly, she cursed her chosen attire. The tank top restricted her breathing beyond annoyance and she was not at all pleased by how her pants prevented comfortable movement. Something that she would undoubtedly need in the hours to come.

Her wardrobe could be forgiven if it helped her accomplish a passing job of appearing to be charming. The truth was, Ariadne had given up the majority of her communication with the outside world long ago. She had the uneasy notion that every word to pass her lips sounded fake and hollow, but the idiot seemed to be falling for it.

Ah, yes. Her ever-gracious host, who even now was rambling on about one thing or another, attempting to hide his true intentions from her. A difficult task for one who wore his heart on his sleeve like a cheap trinket. Perhaps he would not mind losing his tonight then. It would not have even taken someone like Lecter to see through this man: this weak, pathetic being with an unhealthy obsession for himself and a mind that would have sickened his own mother. Ariadne could not help feeling a slight twinge of pity for the creature.

He revolted her beyond belief and it was all she could do to keep from vomiting when he touched her. In a way, she would actually be doing him a favor, releasing him from his living hell. Even though doing so would not prevent him from journeying on to another hell not of his making. Ariadne took another sip of the drink, washing it around in her mouth. _To his health indeed._

Ariadne was careful to slowly present the impression that she was becoming more and more disoriented with the passage of time. Rohypnol, also known as Spanish fly, was said to cause amnesia, confusion, and frequent blackouts. She continued to rest her chin upon her right hand, closing her eyes now and allowing an expression of puzzled fatigue cross her brow.

Lowe was jabbering on, something about his father and how he had been such a role model for his life. Ariadne only half-listened. She knew about his father. She knew that he had nearly throttled Lowe's mother to death one night twenty-five years ago when she had let his dinner get cold. She knew about Lowe's admiration for the filthy rich. She knew he spent too much time alone. She knew his childhood fear of bugs. His bad habit of chewing on the back of his hand. His preference for boxers over briefs. She knew his social security number, his credit card number, his address, and the maiden names of his three ex-wives. It had taken her nearly a week to gather all the necessary information. Piecing together someone's personal history was tedious at best, but it was necessary if she was to do her job well.

Ariadne giggled stupidly again and reached for the martini glass again and knocked it over in her clumsiness. "Oops." She tried to bend over to pick it up, but the floor was swirling too violently. She was unsure how much longer she sat there, picking away splinters from the bar counter and listening to Lowe's ever-droning voce. He should have chosen a job as an answering machine instead of going into real estate. He would have been harmless, and she never would have found him.

Shouts and sounds of breaking glass from the TV area. Two pairs of beer-bellied men were locked in dispute over the game score. Ariadne watched in amusement as bottles were shattered over tables and heads and one frustrated man upended the television. As the bartender ran to restore order, Lowe leaned close to her.

"Let's get out of here before everything goes to hell."

Ariadne's head lolled upon her neck, eyes closed in dumb stupor. "Okay," she said softly. Lowe supported her on her feet as they walked through the sweaty chaos out through the door; Ariadne felt the cold night air hit her face. A familiar, sickening feeling rumbled through her stomach as she opened her eyes to the blackness punctuated by lurid streetlamps swirling in her vision like the lanterns of tumbling coracles on the River Acheron, but she shoved it quickly away. _No time for old memories now_.

Ariadne was helped into the passenger seat of Lowe's car. A Porsche, she noticed. The top was down and wind blew furiously into Ariadne's face as Lowe drove at top speed through the darkened streets. She checked her watch at regular intervals, and once, when Lowe regarded the side view mirror before cutting off a white Camry behind him, she fumbled in her purse for a syringe and injected herself with the straw-colored liquid. Her mind felt clearer immediately.

The streets were growing smaller and darker now as Lowe headed toward the sparser, more opulent suburbs. He lived on the end of a street devoid of all but one streetlamp and a quarter mile away from the nearest house. Ariadne had been sure to take that into account when choosing Lowe. Not too long now…she took deep breaths to prepare herself for what would come.

Ariadne did not move as he parked the Porsche and came around the side to get her. Her breathing remained even and calm as she allowed him to lift her in his arms and carry her across the lawn and through the front door of his house. For once she blessed her tight leather pants that numbed her legs of the feeling of his hands on her thighs.

Entering the house, Lowe headed for the flight of stairs, paused at the foot, and moved instead toward a large living room, his heels clicking on the hardwood floor. Ariadne's purse rested upon her lap as he laid her down on an overlarge leather couch.

Now the sound of him taking a few steps back to regard her lying motionless across the cushions. Ariadne opened her eyes to see him standing there and smiled slightly. He returned the smile with a full-hearted grin and loosened his tie.

It was time.

Ariadne's eyes rolled back in their sockets until the whites were showing, and then rolled them back further and further still until she peered into her mind. _She wandered the yet-unadorned halls of her memory palace, savoring the simplicity. She never found the purpose to build much higher than the foundations. There was nothing worth the space it would fill. Except one. But the notion that she could confine him inside these walls was absurd. The silence would keep her occupied. She would return in full vengeance for the fun ahead after this unpleasantness was over._

Pressure on her mouth now, she felt it from far away, as Lowe forced his tongue into her mouth and kissed her long. Ariadne was reminded of maggots crawling through the unhinged jaws of decomposing corpses. Her hand crept closer and closer toward her purse, but no, not yet…not unless she could see, could be sure of her target. Her other hand ripped away at the buttons of Lowe's shirt, exposing his chest.

Lowe moaned in barely concealed lust as his hand inched toward the zipper of her pants.

_Slam of her fist into the bare concrete wall as she screamed and choked with rage._

_Those hands she still felt moving over her body, touching, caressing, raping, tearing, clawing…A hand mashing her head down sideways as an inexorable weight savored its possession. "Don't look, you bitch!"_

Her pants were sliding down her legs now as Lowe worked them off with one hand. Her underwear was still on; her legs were free. The brief cool air she could feel upon her thighs was gone immediately as Lowe rolled on top of her. He grinned lasciviously and licked his lips before bending to Ariadne's mouth again. His eyes closed as he kissed her.

Her left hand came up and rested upon his chest, a few inches left of center. She clutched at his skin, fingers entwined in the chest hair. Her right hand grasped the object concealed in her purse.

_She tore her hand, bleeding, out of the hole she had made in the wall. A trickle of sunlight crept in through the gap in the concrete. She whirled, spun aside, hiding her eyes from the light_.

_The shadow was waiting on her other side and she raised her eyes to him. He asked her plainly if she had ever seen a rose bleed_.

_"No."_

_"I hadn't either. Until now." With that he took her hand and kissed it, his maroon eyes never leaving her face_.

Without a word, she drove the stiletto into Lowe's chest, the entry point perfectly centered between her left index and middle fingers splayed across his torso. The slender handle of the stiletto wiggled as Lowe's spiked heartbeat rose to an ecstatic height were it not that he was in immediate danger for his life.****

He screamed, tumbled sideways off the couch as his eyes lowered in shock to the knife protruding from his chest, a millimeter to the right of his heart.

Ariadne got up swiftly from the couch and advanced on him very slowly, every step measured and calculated, any sign of dizziness or weariness gone in a flash. Her smile was red with lust. She spoke no word while the man stared at her, stared and stared and tried to find an answer for what was happening in those golden brown eyes of the woman.

They spoke back like daggers in themselves, and even he who had no experience with the reading of eyes could make out the message: _Vengeance. Punishment. Time._

_"Trust me."_

_"I will."_

Ariadne pounced upon Lowe, covering him quickly like a spider hovering over a crouched parasite. With one swift movement, she jerked her fang out of her prey. Blood trickled out of the neat hole in his exposed chest. There wasn't nearly as much blood as there should have been. Lowe had time to take one breath before the stiletto was plunged into his chest once again, this time to the left of his heart, now fluttering oddly like the crinkled wings of a newly born butterfly.

Lowe's ankles worked mechanically, pushing him away from the monster in spasmodic jerks, slipping over hard wooden planks and his own blood. His movements were rushed by dead fright, but he was fighting a battle he had already lost. Ariadne paused slightly in her advance, an amusing memory brought to mind by this sight.

Rachel felt the gold metal of the ring on his clenched hand connect with her jawbone, as she then lost her balance and fell to the ground. "You stupid bitch! How dare you?!" he shouted, over and over again, spitting into her face as she lay writhing and crawling backwards, spitting up the blood that was dripping into her mouth. It tasted like gutter water.

Lowe spat a mouthful of blood into the air that congealed into a fine mist, hovering in front of his contorted features. He continued scuttling backwards, then quite suddenly felt his back against a wall. Gray eyes met golden brown as he stared into the face of hell.

Ariadne squatted next to his trembling form and coolly yanked the stiletto out of his chest yet again. "Do you know what a thrip is, Harold?"

Stab.

"Thrips are light brown, slender parasites, who while in the adult stage will fly to other plants when disturbed. They particularly enjoy preying on roses."

Yank. Stab.

"They 'rasp' into the leaves to obtain the plants juices, leaving the leaf distorted, with noticeable scars." Her voice was dry and monotone as if reading from an encyclopedia.

Stab. Piteous screams.

"That's what you we planning to do to me, weren't you? I was quite expendable in your opinion, just as you are in mine."

Her hand hovered over his chest, the knife dripping and poised. And then her whole body shuddered. She lowered her face to Lowe then, and the deathly sparks of light were clearly visible in her eyes. Those sparks seen in only one other. That none, except Will Graham, had looked upon and lived.

He choked on the blood in his throat then as Ariadne looked on, and on, and her excitement grew wilder and madder as Harold Lowe became deader and deader. Her hand surged forward as she bowed to him, and stabbed, over and over, punching a neat circle around his heart, cutting it out, removing his black heart from its temple, burning in her hands, blood gushing from every wound like oceans of crimson. An annoying buzzing, screeching sound was filling her ears from the body on the floor, and she finally cut it off by plunging the knife, straight and true, into the very center of the heart.

She laughed, then. Another memory struck her, a funny story. She remembered the smile that met his eyes when he recited to her what he had said to one man before.

_"Looks like a straw down a doodlebug hole, doesn't it?"_

Ariadne tilted her head slightly, considering while regarding her piece of art, her victim that laid now motionless upon the throw rug, blood surrounding him like so many rose petals, torn and cast upon the ground. She took a few quiet steps toward the couch and removed eight bracelets from her purse and put them on next to the identical one on her wrist. Nine golden bracelets. Nine treasures. The gold glittered upon her blood-smeared wrist.

She recalled Margie, and smiled. "Looks more like the thrip surrounded by the rose petals upon which he has engorged…and swelled to bursting. Doesn't it, Lowe?"

But it was too late for Lowe to answer.


	7. This Year's Roses

Labyrinth of the Burning Heart 

---------------

By Jstarz927 and Aine Deande

A/N: Many thanks once again to all our reviewers, you mean the world to us. And don't worry if you're confused so far, we promise that everything will be explained eventually. This chapter, like the previous chapter is **rated R** for violence.

Chapter 7 

**This Years' Roses**

_Work. Work, work, work to do. So much a mess, so much to do and so little time to do it. My little puppet is waiting, waiting…_

Chanting inwardly to the familiar rhythm of her own beating heart, Ariadne began the usual procedures. Taking out her purse she pulled on a pair of white hospital gloves, always careful as to not catch any infection by her oversight. She could afford no faux pas when it came to these matters. 

She was cool and professional at the job, pulse rate never above eighty-five, even when she later cut out his tongue. But within, a demon was raging, wild like a thunder-blaze, uncontrollable once beyond the point of preparation.

_Hannibal…I doubt that even you knew then just how much you would do for me_. 

Ariadne smiled as she remembered with fondness their long talks in the overly appeasing psychiatric room with the personal touches, remembering his eyes foremost with a clarity as though he was before her. She remembered the plush leather sofa they had both sat upon and the weathered grandfather clock set across the room, ticking away the seconds of her life. She had never forgotten his smile, either. A sudden strike of venom and honey, altogether in one flash of teeth, those small, white teeth that had ripped open many men's skins.

He had smiled to her with pleasure flooding his eyes and she had smiled right back.

Ariadne. The name he had given her. Her one true name.

But enough of that now.

She got up, placed the tools unnecessary for the moment on the counter. A very visible pause then. A resting hour, moments before the storm would arise within her. She waited, prepared.

She turned with a twist, spinning on her heels, took two controlled steps towards her victim, still sprawled upon the parquet floor. A smile. _His _smile. A mixture of deadly venom and sugar-sweet honey.

She was ready.

She turned off the light-switch and darkness consumed the room, only dark bodies sketched and silhouetted in the night-light of the moon. She closed the curtains. A weak beam of amber continued to peek in from a streetlamp outside. It was good enough for now. She needed complete darkness to perform her task. Only then would her eyes truly see.

Human beings generally use no more than the top portion of their lungs while breathing. Old stale air can rest at the bottom of the lungs for weeks at a time and leads to quick fatigue and rapid heart rate during strenuous exercise.

Ariadne closed her eyes and took a deep breath, began to level it, slowly, making sure her heart rate maintained its calm and rhythmic beat throughout her body. She began breath-control procedures. Easy breathing, concentrating only on breathing, while easing her high-strung body in the process. Puffing stale air out of her lungs in breath after breath. His touch of before still hung heavily about her skin, like old rags. She felt those disgusting hands, smelled them clearly all around her. 

They would be the first to go.

Perhaps followed by his disgusting tongue. And then his face, bit by bit, pieces of his carefully-constructed mask stripped off. His whole life was there, imprinted into his face. Oh, how she would enjoy cutting it away.

Up until this point, Ariadne had been very careful to follow Lecter's methods to perfection. But now…Starling was already safe in her possession; she need not be so meticulous any longer. There was room now for some ­_fuuuun_.

After two, three minutes of inhaling and exhaling, in and out, slowly, calmly, she opened her adjusted eyes to the almost complete darkness surrounding her. She blinked and her eyes seemed to be slit like the lioness' yellow orbs.

Then, almost as though it had a will of its own, her mouth opened and out came her tongue, exploring the air like it could still taste the raw emotion of Lowe's still-palpable fear. It slid right back in after a minute, resting at the roof of her palate as though at peace, and Ariadne savored the flavor of old fear and new death as though it was fine wine.

She marked the large living room fireplace and the large stack of wood with her gaze. His sweetbreads would be deposited there, surrendered to the flames, after she finally got around to cutting him open. A wry smile tugged the corners of her lips. Despite all the habits she picked up from Hannibal, cannibalism happened not to be one of them.

And then, she was moving again. Eyes closed and still behind her eyelids, her hand shot up to her shoulder blades, toward the spaghetti-thin bands holding up her tank top. 

Without as much as a rustling noise, she let the bands slide off her shoulders, and she worked herself out of the uncomfortable top and built-in bra as though it had been a straightjacket. _Who can possibly breathe in such tight clothing, anyhow? How those women survive all night in a crowded bar smothered in cigarette smoke and the smell of other people's exudation… she would never know. _

The leather pants, which Lowe had been so kind as to remove for her still lay upon the couch, scrunched up toward the armrest. Finally, her high heels came off landing with a thud on the wooden floor, and she flinched at the unexpected break of atmosphere the sound triggered in the perpetually placid space, like drops of stray paint on a masterpiece. This was her territory, this was her haven. She was home here.

She made this room as _his had been, the day Hannibal had…_

_Hannibal_. The immediate air around her crackled as his name was allowed to filter through the barren walls of her memory palace, casually, though nothing associated with Dr. Lecter's first name was ever casual. 

Ariadne stepped over the roses of blood with her bare feet, naked to the crown. Her golden jewels she left on. They were as much a part of this part of her personality as his presence was. His presence, inside her mind.

She stepped to the mirror. Instantly when they had come into this room she had noticed Lowe had a full-size mirror covering almost all of the opposite end of the room. The walls narrowed into a corner there and this corner would be her altar. Yes. It was appropriate he should have placed his mirror here. Nothing else would do quite as well. She didn't feel like dragging the body all the way up the stairs to the master bedroom where there undoubtedly would be one too, anyway. 

Unclad before the looking glass. She felt a familiar twinge of exposure, the same sort she had felt when she had first come in to visit Dr. Lecter for her… problems. His eyes had been her looking glass then, age-old knowledge reflecting behind those maroon pinpoints of vigor and sinister intensity.

She had known, then and there, as he unclothed her with his eyes, not to bare her body to him, as so many common, forgotten women had in his past. But she had seen faith to bare her soul to him in all its ugliness and glory. Her soul, enigmatic and shapeless to others but an undefined treasure to him. Little by little, she allowed him to know her, stunned as much as he had been that she could hide herself from him. That had almost been the death of her. He had marveled in her growth as he tutored her, managed her, reached inside and with one well-collected swing of the axe, dashed a thousand walls to the ground. Walls where behind were buried long lost traumas, and emotions she had longed to forget. He had taught her how to see herself with the clarity of a rising sun.

He had called her a nymph, an old spirit of nature, mysterious and misunderstood but treacherous as the sea. When she allowed him to see beyond her layers of image for what she really was.

He had called her a lioness, sleek, stealthy and the most deadly creature of the pride. With a smile now, she wondered if he would ever know what he had truly created.

She had her own pier glass now. Bare and still before the mirror…_oh crude all-revealing reflection let me see the self beyond me._

Ariadne looked and looked into the looking glass as her fingers began to travel places. Her left thumb went up and down a scar formed like a crescent moon, sickle-shaped with protrusions like rose thorns, on the left side of her abdomen. She caressed it delicately as though it was a wound made of love. It wasn't. And she needn't close her eyes to remember…

_The red-hot poker scratching her abdomen, burning her flesh…A silent scream then, muffled by the years. A face without a name hovers above her, the scorching pain makes her double over, and she utters this prayer to the one who has no name…_

_"I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry…"_

With one calculated blow of the fist she broke the mirror before her, the image of herself breaking as she looked at it. The pieces crashed to the floor with a clattering noise that reminded her vaguely of another night, only that time it had been china. She took an especially wicked-looking shard into her hand, careful not to cut her hands upon the edges. The burnished silver seemed to reflect in her eyes.

No more scars to see. Only scars to make, apply, on a rightful victim of her own hand. 

_'Twas a pity that he wouldn't feel._

Showtime.

_For this year's roses are red, Margie._

Ariadne smiled to her, to herself, to him…most of all to him, as she brought down the mirror shard swiftly upon Lowe and split his face in two.

---------------

When a person loses one of his five senses, the other four are magnified exponentially to make up for the loss. A blind person can memorize the layout of the room simply by running his hands along each wall once, seeing by touch and the changing intensities of light.

As Clarice Starling lay in the bed for a week, robbed of her sight, she had memorized the structure of the room she was in four times over. High-arched ceiling planks over ornate paneling. Once when Cahlin had brought in the lamp for her second meal of the day, the light had flared a bit brighter than usual, and Clarice could just make out the carving of a bull's head engraved over the doorway. She looked to where the carving was now, imagining the curving horns and slanted, opaque eyes, seeing them in her mind.

She imagined the animal detaching itself from its wooden prison and ambling through the silent halls of the mansion. Clarice could hear every single creak of the house, every sigh of musty air, and imagined that it was the bull causing the noise. And when the strange noises had started a few days ago, soft music, echoing footsteps, and once a thin, piercing scream, she offered them not a second thought.

Clarice could smell the damp sweat that still clung to her skin, mingling with the fabric of her shirt. She hadn't been allowed to shower in over a week now. Perhaps she could present the request for a bath to Cahlin the next time she saw her. _'Twas a pity to die without smelling your best._ That thought almost succeeded in bringing a smile to her lips, but not quite. However, Clarice's newfound sense of smell could not be overlooked. She had often wondered how Dr. Lecter could sniff out fear in a human being but no longer. Fear was all around her, clinging to her skin like her sweat. Fear had an earthy, decaying tone to its scent, prickling her nostrils like a pungent corpse.

She detected other older scents in the room besides her fear and anticipation. Faint remnants of laundry detergent and bleach in the silky sheets of the bed. Mothballs underneath. And a strange, subtle smell that was exuded by the sheets, the headboard, and much of the carpet around the bed. It reminded Clarice of rusty copper, but she could not quite place it.  
  
Considering the subtleties of the scents Clarice had attuned herself to, it did not surprise her when she smelled the approach of Cahlin ten seconds before her footfalls betrayed themselves to her ears.

Clarice could smell the blood on Cahlin's hands. It hit her with all the force of a tidal wave and Clarice relived ten years of jump-out squads and shootings in a millisecond. This blood however, was tainted with the scent of triumph.

Clarice chose to ignore it and instead proposed the question of the shower.

Cahlin laughed. She was in a good mood. "Of course, I should have thought of that before. Please forgive me. You are my most prized possession after all."

Clarice suppressed an inward shudder. "Thanks. I think."

"Oh Clarice, that is one thing I will always admire about you. Your wit." Cahlin walked closer then, and Clarice could see the flat metal tray in her hands. The tray held one syringe filled with clear liquid. "I do not doubt that under different circumstances, we could have become rather good friends. But in lieu of that, I will guarantee you at least two more weeks to live." She set the tray down on the bedside table and placed the lamp beside it.

"Why?"

"Why what?" said Cahlin, taking the syringe into her hands and tapping the side of it.

"Why do you want to kill me?" Stupid, stupid. Think of _something_ more clever than that at least. "It's because of Lecter, isn't it?"

Cahlin had enough control over her reflexes that Clarice could not see her inward flinch at the sound of his name. "Perhaps. What makes you think that?"

"If you're…" Clarice paused, considering the implications of what she would say next. If she was wrong…well, it wasn't as if Cahlin didn't read newspapers. She would have had become acquainted with the _National Tattler_ at some point. And it wasn't as if Clarice could make a bigger fool out of herself than she already had.

"If you're one of his old girlfriends seeking revenge," she said, a twisting feeling in her stomach as she spoke, "I'm not your…competition. The _Tattler_ isn't exactly your most reliable form of information." There, she'd said it.

Cahlin stared, her expression unreadable. Then she threw her head back and laughed, the sound ringing off the arched ceiling of the room like cathedral bells. "I believe we already had this discussion, but then again you _were_ nursing a hangover at the moment, so I don't truly expect you to remember too well."

Her voice dropped in volume then, her words increasingly hushed and menacing. "You FBI agents with your achingly simple way of thinking. It's no wonder that there are so many fugitives that you are seemingly incapable of apprehending. Yet you, of all people should know…things are never that simple. It doesn't matter what Lecter said. Simplicity plays no part in the lives of people like us. But if you really must know, I had the opportunity to make the acquaintance of Dr. Lecter a long time ago. Dr. Lecter murdered my husband."

  
Confusion abounding in Clarice's mind. If this woman had a grudge against Lecter, why was she targeting her? Clarice was the main force in helping to bring him to justice. True, she had not prevented him from making his escape that night on the Chesapeake, but she had been drugged. He had unmistakably planned everything in advance that night, there was nothing she could have done.

Yes there was. You could have taken your gun and shot his ass when he was carving up your enemy's brain.

Clarice pointedly ignored that thought.

But Cahlin wasn't quite finished yet. She moved closer to Clarice, her golden eyes reflecting the lamplight like molten lava. She had had her little fun. Now was the time to see what Starling was made of and she would. She would see every inch of her mind, every nuance, every fear, every hidden desire. But first…she leaned even closer, her mouth an inch away from Clarice's ear.

Cahlin's voice was a hissed whisper. "Lecter was late, you know…" and the lioness bared her small, white teeth to her prey…

"I should have killed that bastard years ago."

The needle pierced her arm. Clarice felt a numbing, coldly burning sensation around the spot that swiftly spread through her entire arm, down her torso, climbing into her face, into her brain. And then her world melted before her eyes.


	8. Journeys

Labyrinth of the Burning Heart 

---------------

By Jstarz927 and Aine Deande

A/N: Wow, it's been awhile, eh? Never fear, we're far too addicted to this story to ever give it up. We'd like to take some of this time to respond to a certain reviewer.

angelofnight: A guy that thought Hannibal was God, eh? Close, close, read on, and see…

And we'd like to thank all reviewers, you all mean so much to us. And now, the eighth part of our endless saga of insanity.

Chapter 8 

Journeys 

Dr. Lecter sat before the table in his apartment, his right hand resting lightly upon his thigh. His left forearm lay flat upon the table, muscles taut as he clenched and unclenched his fist. The ceiling fan spun a lazy pattern and Dr. Lecter's hair ruffled slightly in the breeze, unnoticed by him as he focused all his attention upon his hand.

His therapy had taken an enormous leap forward just this past morning. He had terminated his sessions with Nicole Bondelier in a late-night phone call to the hospital, giving no explanation but more than satisfying the hospital by paying for the rest of his sessions in full. Dr. Lecter had entertained himself for long time afterwards with images of a distraught Nicole, placing all dresses she had tried on as possible attire for the night out back in the closet, leaked mascara smearing those precision-corrected corners of her eyes and cheeks in classic movie style.

  
His new therapist was male, a doctor from a hospital in a nearby town. Dr. Link had immediately abandoned the gradual approach his previous sessions had incorporated and had begun taking him full-throttle through more and more difficult exercises with little mercy. By the end of this morning, Dr. Lecter's hand had stiffened into something resembling a crab's claw, but he was pleased with the progress his therapist was allowing.

It was now late afternoon again. His hand had loosened sufficiently that Dr. Lecter felt he could manage a few more exercises.

Exactly twenty-four hours since he had heard that fateful broadcast. What had prevented him from going straightaway to her rescue? Fear? Uncertainty? Or perhaps the knowledge that whatever actions he might have taken in the heat of the moment might have had disastrous consequences? Dr. Lecter made few mistakes, but the few that he had made had been devastating.

For a brief minute, Dr. Lecter wondered why he had never been able to maintain a successful relationship with any female. His pupils dilated slightly at a memory before he swiftly slammed the door of his memory palace upon it, the cloying scent of death nevertheless escaping to torment his mind.

_Clarice. Kidnapped. What in the world did she get into now? The girl just never was granted a break…_

Nor would she ever receive one. Clarice Starling seemed to attract trouble wherever she went. _That's my girl_. With a long sigh, Dr. Lecter relaxed his left hand and slid it from the table surface. Of course, he had no choice. Clarice was in trouble. What was left for him but to help her out? Leave her to the wolves? Not an option. Let her sweat for a bit before coming to the rescue? Not his style, even if he liked to tease. No. He had known that he would free her before his mind had determined the thought as valid. No further thinking could dissuade him from that conclusion.  
  
He had discovered long ago he couldn't refuse her anything.  
  
But where _was_ she?  
  
His thoughts were disordered pieces of information, a puzzle he had yet to solve. He knew from the news report that Clarice had last been seen in the company of Memphis police, apparently investigating a series of murders closely resembling his own. Dr. Lecter was fairly certain he hadn't killed a single soul since that abominably rude Paul Krendler. Krendler had dirtied his tongue with remarks directed at the only thing pure in his life, and therefore had been punished in the most suitable way. Dr. Lecter was not the only one who admired his unique form of justice.  
  
Who was copying him? Was it an admiring figure with a dark sense of humor, a fan, much like Dolarhyde had been in some strange aspect? A shadow of a smile flickered over the doctor's features, allowing his mind to drift back to those good old times for just a moment, before redirecting his thoughts to the matter at hand.   
  
An admiring fan? Maybe. But it could also be someone who held a grudge against him. Someone who wanted to kill him, perhaps, and thought that by offending him by duplicating his pleasurable hobby in frightening fashion ­he could lure Dr. Lecter out of hiding to seek out the offender.  
  
Alas, Dr Lecter _would _come out of hiding now, but for decidedly other reasons. Or else…this was just what was intended. Perhaps, Clarice had been kidnapped…by the same person.  
  
Snap. Dr Lecter's eyes snapped open and instantly registered, one blink at a time, this revelation. So, the copycat killer was also the Clarice's kidnapper. There could be no doubt over this conclusion; Clarice would never stay out of contact with anyone for this long. Her loyalties bound her to the people she cared about, the institution she had so craved to be a part of…

She would have thought it insolent not to reveal to the FBI or that friend of hers, Ardelia Mapp, a sign of her well-being or current whereabouts. If Clarice had been on her way to capture this impersonator of his, it could well be she had been shot dead already, if she had interfered with the person's plans. But not likely.  
  
Judging from the attention to detail the murderer had displayed in copying the Doctor's work, it was fair to say that he was a level-headed, unperturbed human being. Which made him much more dangerous than he otherwise would have been. Then he would know…he would have to know what value Clarice Starling would be to him.  
  
So for now, Dr Lecter had the comforting inference that Clarice wasn't yet gone, merely in a state of helpless captivity. Now then, the next step in his analysis…how to find them?  
  
For this, he had to rely on what he knew of little Starling's behavioral pattern…the part of her personality that had molded her into being, into becoming this flaring beacon of incorruptibility for which he respected her.__

Why had she agreed to take the case? It would have been more likely for her to dismiss from this point in her life all concerns and dealings related to him. Yet, Clarice had once more thrust herself into a game of hide and seek, of cat and mouse. She certainly sought out such a possibility with relish. A smile threatened to invade his features. Had she enjoyed their verbal battles as much as he had?  
  
Clarice had once before left behind the familiar without telling Mommy and Daddy, and later, without telling her disloyal consort, the F.B.I. She had ridden into the night on her precious blind steed to save her lambs from the killing, to save her own mind from the screams. Rescuing her symbolic Princess from the Tower, she had forsaken her values and thereby embraced her own fate, and with that, her destiny.  
  
She had also abandoned all for the sake of _his_ safety. In the eyes of the world, he was a criminal who got his just desserts when being captured by one of his own victims. In her eyes, _he_ had been a victim trapped in the evil claws of Mason Verger, and she had felt the immediate, frantic need to rescue him. Rescue him from the killing.  
  
Who had to be rescued now?  
  
Engrossed in thought, Dr. Lecter toyed with the metal brace but stopped short of reattaching it to his wrist. Instead, he laid the brace aside and reached with his right hand towards a dusty box, within which lay his passe-partout to all the information he would need to create his own case file of the matter. And more. He would have to return to Memphis.  
  
Memphis. The taste of the name reminded him of almond soap ­ _Sapone di mandorle._ The touch of her skin under his forefinger. His return to the much-loathed city would undeniably dig up old memories. Yet, in order to catch the culprit, he would willingly enter the killer's field of study.  
  
And throughout the time he was thinking, Dr. Lecter was always working, working…his left hand still of little use, but able to hold down the edge of the piece of plastic he had retrieved from the box, his other hand removing an area approximately the size of a postage stamp, knife flashing. Adding strokes of ink here and there. Within a matter of hours, he had emptied his room of all belongings he would need upon the trip and reset the alarms to the apartment. He tucked the Harpy away neatly into his pocket.  
   
The FBI badge, former owner Paul Krendler, was secluded safely from sight, his altered face staring back from the space where a photo of the deceased used to be, and a new name settling proudly on the jotted line. Suspicious officers would be most unwelcome during his investigation into the case. Luckily for him, Krendler's signature had appeared as little more than chicken scratches and not much effort was needed to alter the name.  
  
The Jaguar roared as Dr. Lecter pulled away from the city. The stars in the sky glimmered with intensity as the lights of the world below ceased to be seen. He took a deep breath of night air as it rushed past his face. The taste was intoxicating. He had always enjoyed driving the Jag.  
  
_Memphis…Clarice…a sea filled with memories. Let's hope that in the process, the killer might reveal himself.  
  
_----------------------  
  
Clarice Starling drifted off into oblivion like a child on a water float, riding upon a smooth wave away from shore. She could feel it happening, feel herself transported from one world to another, but could do nothing about it. These forces were stronger than she was.  
  
The darkness swallowed her whole it seemed, just like it had on that very first day when Cahlin had brought her into the house, into the room with the human skin and that odd, copper-like smell again clanging the air like a layer of rust over an old piece of iron.  
  
She felt wretched now, thin, and her awareness of where she was faded by the minute. She felt herself being picked up and laid down again, someone tucking at her clothes…_who's doing that_, she vaguely thought, her mind's discursive thoughts drifting in and out of focus like a lens that wasn't working properly. _You mustn¹t do that…this is my body, get off, get off…  
  
"Geroff me!" she screamed, West Virginian accent returning full force into her voice, a little girl of ten years old, fighting off arms that wanted to comfort her. "Leave me alone, leave me alone…daddy!" She wanted her daddy, wanted him desperately. How could those awful men tell her daddy was gone? Daddy could never be gone. He was going to be there for her, always. He would be there to peel oranges in the kitchen and tickle her belly with his trigger finger.  
  
"No! Daddy, no! Daddy! Daddy, come and tell these people they are wrong! Daddy! Daddy…"  
  
_"Daddy…" Clarice murmured, in present time, her eyes rolling upward until only the whiteness of her orbs was visible to Cahlin, who was hovering over Clarice's trembling and twitching form. Cahlin shook her head ever slightly and, mentally, went over every piece of information she knew about Clarice and her father, the dead night watchman with the tobacco smile and the knife with the top broken off square.  
  
She was drifting again, but the arms wouldn't leave her. In fact, they seemed to hold her down now, as though to control her. Control? Nobody controlled Clarice Starling! She was her own woman… "No," Clarice murmured again, "Daddy…no…"  
  
_"Clarice…Clarice…"  
  
_The voice came softly, tugging at the corners of her mind, consoling while she jousted with windmills. Clarice…only two men in the world had ever called her that…strange she should think of it now. The voice, she couldn't yet decipher but… "Dad?"  
  
_"Clarice…"  
  
_No, not her father. Her father had a thick West-Virginian accent, drawing out every vowel leaving it little distorted with mountain slang. No, this voice was crisp, slightly metallic sounding, as though the voice was coming from afar and echoing off the walls. Or as if the space from which the voice was speaking was closed off…and the cultured voice spoke again, from behind unbreakable glass.

  
"Dr. Lecter?"  
  
Cahlin raised her head abruptly from where she was applying gentle pressure to Clarice's arms, keeping them flat upon the bed. She had heard his name being spoken. A smile tugged at her lips. _Funny…they never got to the point of addressing each other upon first name basis. _Or perhaps she simply refuses to call him by his given name._ Now why is that?  
  
_

Despite herself, Cahlin found herself intrigued by this woman, not merely because of her connection with the aforementioned, with all its consequences; but also because of her obvious inner strength and resources. In spite of all that Cahlin had done, or hadn't done to her, Clarice still did not resort to begging or even thorough questioning.  
  
Cahlin could see it in her eyes: that hunger for knowledge and advancement. The first time she'd seen it, it had made her laugh. The little cub. And yet now…now, she noticed with displeasure she was beginning to like, truly like the young woman.  
  
One must remember that Dr Hannibal Lecter and Rachel Ariadne Cahlin were quite similar when it came to their methods in the approach to and dissection of their fellow members of the human race.

"Dr. Lecter?" Clarice repeated, writhing on the bed as she tried to fight off the imaginary hands holding her down. She felt disconnected, away somehow, but the voice attempted to bring her back. She knew it…as she knew he had come for her. Only her.

"Come, Clarice…" 

_His voice caressed her like an ocean breeze, and almost inaudible, a soft sigh escaped Clarice's lips at the sound of his voice, soothing, and her whole being focused on him._

"Dr. Lecter, help me."

_"Run with me, Clarice, run… run…"_

"I can't, Doctor, I need your help."

She was always in need of his help, it seemed, one way or another. First Gumb… the thought of him caused for an involuntary shudder throughout her body, and once again the voice came to soothe.

_"Clarice… open your eyes."_

_My… eyes? _It appeared to her, in her drugged state of mind, the most ludicrous question she had ever heard. Did she even have eyes, or ears, or a tongue? All that was happening, transpired inside her mind…or didn't it?

_With great effort, Clarice managed to raise her eyelids, just enough to let a streak of light reach past the darkness and outstretch its ivory-white hand to her. It was a beacon, and she took the hand extended to her gratefully. "Thank you."_

_She could hear him smiling. "That's my girl." Her eyes flew open. Dr. Lecter stood there, before her, an aura of white light surrounding him as though he were a vision. And he was. The tuxedo he wore was also a bright white, and his teeth glimmered when he flashed his smile at her. Clarice could feel her jaw dropping._

Once again, he offered his hand to her, as in her shock her hand had slipped from his to dangle limply at her side like a rag. "Run with me, Clarice," he said now, his voice clear and crisp in her mind, the metallic hiss underneath only a memory to her now, as he had been outside his cell for many years. "I came halfway round the world just to see you run."

_Run…But why would she run? Clarice shook her head, confused. Why would she run from him? He meant safety to her…She ran, only when being chased by something, her inner demons, or…Gumb._

Once more, the name made her shiver, and she closed her eyes and shook her head to rid herself of the image. Yet when she opened her eyes, the Doctor was gone… and she was alone again.

_"Doctor? Doctor? Where are you? Doctor…" She stood now, a frightened girl in a tweed coat, in front of his cell in Baltimore. Gone was the light, and so was he. There was no Dr. Lecter in this cell._

"Memphis," Clarice murmured, trying to make sense with the thoughts tumbling over one another inside her mind, "He's gone to Memphis… I must find him… he knows… he knows…"

Cahlin, who had been eyeing Clarice with great interest, her hands no longer applying pressure to Clarice's arms, mentally stored this information for later use in one of the oftentimes-attended chambers of her memory palace. So, that is why little Starling was in Memphis also, around the time of the Doctor's escape… but why? What did Hannibal know, what essential knowledge did he keep hovering above her head, letting it dangle like a lost key in front of her, so that she would follow him all the way to Memphis?

Cahlin suspected it had something to do with the Buffalo Bill case, another serial killer that had been murdering and slaying size 14 female victims around the time of Lecter's escape. She had suspected Clarice Starling had obtained the needed information using Dr Lecter's help, but had always assumed she'd had all information needed from their conversations in the dungeon in Baltimore.

So Memphis was special to them. _Hmmm…_ The place held emotional value to Cahlin herself as well.  


_Running again, running, running…but no sun lit her path from behind. No guidance. No clear path. No light._

_Her feet tumbled over something, and she fell and kept on falling until she was sure she would never feel the ground again. There was blackness all around her, blackness blacker than the night, as this darkness was never brightened by the glow of lucid stars._

_It was her and the Beast once more, and she was frightened, more frightened than she'd ever known herself to be, more frightened than when they'd taken Daddy away from her, even more frightened than when she first walked down those steps into the dungeon with her greasy-haired companion at her side. She could feel her heart beating in her throat. She was sure that she could taste her own fear._

_Only one thought, one focal point to direct all her attention to…Where is he where is he whereishewhereishe… Everything she had been, was, or could be would be determined now and the moment when one of them pulled the trigger in the dark, dark room._

_The sound of a gun being cocked, behind her. Turn, now, quickly, don't pause for breath, don't stop to think, just shoot, shoot, shoot. Three times in the chest, and once more for good measure. The lights went on, the ventilator still zoomed, and the jack-o-lantern with the two butterflies on it swayed mockingly at her from the ceiling._

_But no Jame Gumb lay dead on the ground._

_It was her._

_Her, down on the ground, face-up, the jack-o-lantern laughing at her. Blood gushed from a wound to the right of her heart.****_

_She was dying. And she felt nothing._

_The darkness invaded her vision once more, and then, with a sickening feeling in her stomach, like just before she plunged down the highest hill on a roller coaster, she was pulled back, back to that place left behind in the past, to another time, long, long ago…_

The barn.

"No…" Clarice twisted, turned, her face distorted with fear and knowledge of what was to come. "Not the barn, no, no… not again, no…"

_Barn? _With renewed engrossment in her captive's hallucination trip, Cahlin regarded the bed on which Starling lay squirming and decided to pay a little more attention to what came next. The mind works in mysterious ways… perhaps she would find out something that would prove invaluable to her.  


She was in the barn, her ten-year old feet cold upon the wooden floor, and she heard the lambs… screaming… howling, screaming at her, Clarice, Clarice, come and save us… don't leave us, rescue us…

Then there was another voice. Coming from behind her, she did not dare turn around. A steady voice, hissing in her ear, the cutting edge of the blade he held underneath the words palpable to the small girl's ears.

_"And what did you see, Clarice, what did you see…?"_  


"No! NO! I won't tell you again, I won't! I won't!" Cahlin watched with growing concern as Clarice screamed from the bed, fighting the sheets and the bonds holding her down, and the horror in that young voice she used, a voice now completely drenched in West-Virginian slang, was so authentic Cahlin blinked, twice.

This came too close, even for her. *Especially* for her. If she went on crying out in panic like this, she might have to bring her out of it. Cahlin's hand crept towards the needle in her pocket, which contained the antidote to the drug given to Clarice…then Clarice's shuddering eased and her voice quieted. Cahlin's hand halted halfway to her pocket, and she listened carefully to what would be said next.  


The silence the air carried was heavy like a sack of sand, pressing her limbs down.

"Alright."

Was that her voice or his? She couldn't tell… but the feeling of fright wouldn't leave her. In fact, it grew and grew and grew… until it seemed to take her over. Until there was nothing left anymore in that barn but her, and her fear. "Doctor…"

She wanted him, needed him, but she couldn't say it out loud. He could lead her out of that barn. He could take her away from the screaming lambs, grant her blessed silence. She knew it. But her heart and her mind spoke in different tongues. Her frightened eyes were windows to her soul as she scanned the space for any sign of normalcy.

_It…had grown. The room. Or had she somehow shrunk? Every object in the barn was now bigger than it had been before… she saw the .32 shotgun lying at her feet, the hulking shadows in the corners of the room even larger than when she had been younger._

_Clarice looked at her feet… and screamed._

_Her feet had turned into hooves. She had four of them. Her skin was snow-white wool. She opened her mouth and screamed… the cry of a lamb erupting from her throat.  
_

The fresh burst of panic penetrated the air of the darkened room so unexpectedly that the freshly whitewashed doors to Cahlin's memory palace were thrown open. Starling's screams chasing Cahlin's own shadows in her memory palace like sunbeams catching up with dawn. Cahlin fled down the halls and rapidly shut all doors ajar because of Starling's presence.

Yet before she could shut all doors, an unbidden memory strode forward from the darker shadows in the hallway and took shape. It lunged forward, grabbed her by the throat with a hand that felt horribly real, choking the life out of her while the shadow of the once real man grinned maliciously, the vision of him swimming in blood…

Cahlin shook herself with the force of a hurricane, pushing the memory back into the room with almost inhuman self-control, closing and locking the door with one swift movement. She returned her attention to Starling.

Clarice was truly falling apart. The whiteness of her orbs were fully revealed, the little red veins in her eyes about to pop, her nails dug into the flesh of her inner palm so mercilessly she had already drawn blood. She was pulling at the bonds with all her strength, causing the straps to cut into her skin but she couldn't feel. Her consciousness was trapped within its horrific past.  


Clarice-the-lamb bellowed and shrieked her lungs out.

"The lambs, the lambs, please don't kill them…"

Cahlin's mouth curved upwards in a grin. Only something Starling had discussed with Hannibal could possibly distress her so much. Well, in that case, she need only make Starling relive the encounter.

Cahlin's lips barely moved as she whispered in her borrowed voice, phrasing her sentence as accurately as she could guess. "Lambs? They were slaughtering the spring lambs?" Her intonation was perfect, having once heard his voice incessantly for over two years, a smooth, crisp sound dripping with menace and strength.

_Commotion upon the barn floor. Clarice-the-lamb's hooves kicked up sawdust as she ran desperately from the gloved hand reaching for her. They trapped her in a corner of the floor in less than a minute._

_"'Old her still now! Don't wanna make 'er suffer too much."_

_The voices of the men squeezed their way into Clarice-the-lamb's mind, disjointed by fear, like wet bars of soap. She struggled harder than ever. Those fingers tightening even more around her neck and wrists…she turned her head in time to see the slaughter knife coming down upon the base of her neck._

Clarice arched her back, standing upon the top of her head as if she were being electrocuted, lifting her neck from the bed. A piercing shriek escaped her lips.

"And they were screaming!" Her words barely comprehensible amidst her own scream that disintegrated into a hysterical sob as her body began to twitch more violently than ever. Cahlin once again fondled the antidote in her hands…no.

_The slaughter knife was gone, it was in Clarice-the-human's hands now, only the blade was now shortened, the edge dull._

_Clarice's hand clumsily moved forward, the butter knife aimed in the general direction of Dr. Lecter's chest. He caught her hand easily. "Come on, Clarice…" When she resisted yet again, she felt herself roughly shoved against a refrigerator door. An aching sensation on her scalp as she felt her hair trapped in the door._

_No…no…not this again._

"How did you feel when you saw them, Clarice?" hissed Cahlin. Unfortunately, her message was not translated word for word in Clarice's hallucinations.

_"How do you feel when you see me, Clarice?" Dr. Lecter's mouth was brushing her ear, his warm breath sighing._

_A painful, throbbing sensation in her abdomen gave way to fear and anxiety. She had avoided this answer for ten years._

The screaming of the lambs were further away now…the ticking of the grandfather clock now the only thing she could hear over his breath. Clarice remained inside the barn, but Agent Starling was now focused completely upon that voice, that man, who had always probed her for answers, and now demanded one that she simply wasn't ready or willing to give.

_She swallowed, hard, and then, in ragged breaths, her voice leapt forward, still tinged with West Virginia, but less like the mountain girl and more like the FBI agent now was._

"I feel…" A beat. "… scared."

_Liar._

She didn't need him to tell her that, the thought was already resounding in her mind.

Cahlin continued speaking in her borrowed whisper. "What would you do to make them stop, Clarice?"

Again, the message was distorted. Horribly.

_"Would you ever say to me, stop? Clarice?"_

_Don't ask me for answers you know I cannot give, Doctor… Do not make me relive this night again, this night I so long to forget…_

"No…not in a thousand years…"

Starling had switched to another experience now. Cahlin regretted that she could not take the time to decipher the origin of this new horror that Starling was reliving, but the drug was wearing off. She would have to make do with what information she had already received. The screaming lambs. "Thank you, Clarice."

"Tell me his name, Doctor," Clarice gasped, out of habit, the images in her mind beginning to fade.

Cahlin said nothing. Pondering the new information she had just received, her eyes regarded Clarice's form upon the bed, drenched in sweat, with barely a twitch in her facial features. She had survived. Good. Without another word, Cahlin turned upon her heels and walked out of the room, leaving Clarice with her dying demons. On her way out, Cahlin removed another golden bracelet from its place in a drawer.

_The figure of Dr. Lecter flickered, faded with the sounds of faraway footsteps. Her body was cold again, floating upon an icy bed in the nether regions of night._

_Amidst the blackness that consumed her mind, Clarice ran wildly into the darkness after him. "Dr. Lecter, Dr. Lecter…come back, please…"_

_Her only answer was the mocking echoes of her own sobs and distant screams._

_"Doctor…" He had not come back, had not repaired her soul after tearing it to shreds. Clarice sank into the blackness, unable any longer to see… and futilely attempted to gather the shattered pieces of her memories back together._


	9. Over Land and Sea

**~* Labyrinth of the Burning Heart *~**

------------------------

By Jstarz927 and Starlit Skye

A/N: Another murder. Ardelia Mapp and Dr. Lecter undergo grief from the Memphis police department. A dark secret begins to be revealed.

**Chapter 9**

**Over Land and Sea**

Sunday, August 27, 2001

~*~*~*~

The Memphis police station smelled as old as it felt. The scent of cold coffee mingled with that of dusty grounds scattered about the floor. An air conditioner roaring at full blast did little to dissipate the smell of old sweat and sticky linoleum chairs. Organized chaos described every aspect of the main lobby as printers whined, phones squawked, struggling criminals were dragged through the main doors, and officers in blue and yellow dictated the lives of several thousand people.

It was in this room that Ardelia Mapp found herself on a balmy Sunday afternoon, and the atmosphere was quite efficient in making her even more pissed off than she already was. "Do you mean to tell me you don't know a single THING?!" she blurted out vehemently, raising her voice despite herself. Some heads in a few of the offices turned in her direction, but she didn't flush or even bother to temper her composure. _To hell with them._ She had enough to worry about as it was.  
  
She scowled at the faces that had turned around to her until they looked away, and once more returned her attention to the whelp behind the counter. The young man had been doing nothing but nod at her words since she got here with an expression as blank as the concrete wall behind him.  
  
She was proud of herself that she hadn't lost self-possession already and punched the startled looking bluecoat before her in his barren face, if only to get a reaction out of him. _Well, to *hell* with self-possession, too.  
  
_Still, she lowered her voice a tone or two and asked for the umpteenth time, "Are you absolutely certain, without the shadow of a doubt, that Officer Starling left no trace nor indication in any way of where she might be heading, despite the fact that she was working on one of _your_ department's cases?" Until the past few days, Ardelia had assumed that Clarice had driven towards home, like she had promised in their phone call. And then she remembered that her friend had never said such a thing. _Damn slippery of you, girlfriend.  
  
Standing tall and erect in one of the hallways of the Memphis police station, she knew for a fact this was one of the last locations where she'd been seen, but these people either had the lousiest short-term memory in the world, or they didn't care enough to bother investigating the matter. Ardelia assumed the latter, and that knowledge made her furious.  
  
The young puppy dog of a cop attending to her plight did little but stall, listening to her endless repetition of the predicament of her friend, sometimes giving the impression he understood the situation. Then, he'd ask her if she'd like some coffee and recap the whole conversation again.  
  
To label the lack of progress in the interrogation as frustrating was the understatement of the new century.  
  
"Do you know _anything_ at all?" But once again, Andrew Conan shook his head.   
  
"Nothing, miss," he said in a slow, clear voice that he might have used on a six-year old. He moved his eyes across her visage for a moment, his facial statement revealing some concern for her state of mind. His next sentence was slightly less condescending, although no more helpful. "I'm sorry miss, but we really don't know anything about the disappearance of Special Agent Starling… Tragic, yes, but it's not our problem…" _Not our problem. Never our problem. _Not for the first time, Ardelia realized just what it was that had Clarice so fed up with the institution she'd dedicated her life to. To keep bouncing into wooden doors of inattention and adamantine walls of neglect had to be the most frustrating feeling in the world. It infuriated Ardelia to no end at how they could act so coolly towards her friend's fate…writing her off like some other missing person file.  
  
_

Conan was smiling again. "Why don't we go inside my cubicle and sit down for a bit? Can I offer you another cup of coffee, perhaps?"  
  
"NO, I don't want no bloody coffee!" Ardelia spat at him, raging by now, exasperated and growing more and more annoyed with the inexperienced fellow. He shrugged his shoulders at her desperation for the third time on end and once again attempted to change the subject.  
  
Well, no more. She was getting worked up, trying to break the glass ceiling she kept beating her head against, but the Memphis police simply refused to budge. A thought struck her mind for the second time that week. _How does Clarice cope with all this bullshit? To hell with this, I'm not holding back anymore. _"Fine, next time you come to us about a kidnapper case which involves _your_ best friend having disappeared off the face of the earth, I'll offer *you* a cuppa, alright? Let's see how you take it!"  
  
He flushed at these words, which upped Ardelia's spirits a bit, gloating over the startled statement on his face. He then gave her a half-hearted smile, as though to say, _I can't help being the helpless cub I am…go find someone more suited for this job.  
  
_But that was just the problem. She'd tried everything. No one was willing to stick out their neck for a missing FBI agent who had been on unreported hiatus anyway. There was no proof of a kidnapping and from the information gathered from the police agents who'd been present that early, early Saturday morning, Clarice hadn't exactly made herself the popular gal either.  
  
At this, a corner of Ardelia's mouth had turned up into a half-smile. _It's the same thing everywhere, ain't it Starling? They'll look down your skirt and try to get into your panties, but the minute you don't let them, they wouldn't care if you were rotting away somewhere in a gutter.  
  
_She tried the nice approach once more, somehow managing to calm her breathy temper and even conjure a smile onto her face. "I'm sorry, Andrew." The young cop mistook the gleam in her eyes for one of interest. "I'm very tired…it was a long drive, and perhaps another cup of coffee wouldn't be such a bad idea after all."

The young man's face lit up as if he had just been offered extra candy on Halloween. "My pleasure, miss. The coffeemaker is in my cubicle, would you mind…?" He made an awkward gesture toward his left.

Ardelia had never heard a more transparent sentence in her life. But if anything, her smile grew wider. _What the hell, I deserve a little bit of fun before I leave_. "I would be happy to."

Conan grinned as he took Ardelia's arm in his, and they walked together toward his cubicle. Within the three-quarter-enclosed space, the two of them were hidden from the view of the rest of the department. Conan busied himself with the coffeemaker, flipping the power switch unnecessarily as he tried to ease his nervous hands. He turned the machine back on, tossing what he hoped was a carefree grin in Ardelia's direction.

Five minutes later, Ardelia balanced a Styrofoam cup of bitter coffee in her lap and proceeded to sit one foot within Conan's comfort zone. The young man grinned crazily as she sipped the coffee, wincing slightly at the taste, and smiled in his direction.

He coughed nervously. "Say, miss, what are your plans for the rest of the weekend? There's a wonderful play—."

He never finished his sentence. All heads in the building turned toward the corner of the room as a shriek reminiscent of an opera singer's high E erupted from Andrew Conan's cubicle. There was a flash of black and brown as Conan sped toward the nearest bathroom, hot coffee dripping from the bottom of his stained shirt and an expression of extreme discomfort upon his face.

Ardelia emerged from the cubicle a second later, barely containing her hysterical laughter beneath a mask of still-present anger. She paused for a moment, enjoying the stunned silence before heading toward the front door.

She stormed out of the Memphis police station so heatedly that she didn't even notice the trench coat clad figure she bumped into just outside the doorway. She muttered a quick apology and continued down the sidewalk without a backward glance as his maroon eyes danced at her lack of reaction.

_In a hurry, Miss Mapp?_

Dr. Lecter was tempted to follow her, to observe what mischief she would cause upon a new object of wrath. However...first things first. The tiny bell jingled as he pushed open the door to the station, wrinkling his nose at the horrendous smell in the air. The trench coat did a good job of hiding most of the stiffness in his left hand, and no one could ever guess that it had been injured without close investigation. But he didn't plan to stay that long.

Andrew Conan, looking as if he had gone face-first down a mudslide several times, saw the elegant man walking towards him and immediately snapped to attention, "Good afternoon, sir, how may I…?"

Dr. Lecter brushed past the annoying whelp as he would a mosquito and walked directly to the department chief's desk. The chief's usually bored expression was suddenly changed to rapt attention as he observed the man approaching his desk. Something about his gait seemed oddly familiar and disturbing. He frowned and tried to look into the man's eyes, but the FBI baseball cap that he wore cast them into shadow.

"Yes?"

Dr. Lecter scratched his false beard with one finger as his right hand dipped into his breast pocket and flashed his ID with a flourish for the policeman. Lecter pocketed the ID quickly, not quite allowing the man to get a decent look. "Special Agent Peter Kent requesting a copy of the LaReine case file."

The policeman's eyes narrowed; the man's presence unnerved him and the chief made up for that with a brusque attitude. "Hey Conan!" The young man's head turned in their general direction. "Need a print of the cannibal copycat case file."

The _what_ case file? Dr. Lecter never found the pet names given to serial killers amusing, and this was no exception.

Conan came running stiff-legged up to the desk, depositing the thick manila folder in front of the chief before scurrying back to his desk like a neurotic butler. The chief pushed the folder toward the agent, forgetting the man's name immediately. "They finally sent someone else to investigate the case, eh?"

Dr. Lecter's irises darkened considerably as he used his right hand to open the folder. "If I were you, I would speak with less disdain," he said in a voice quieter than a whisper and as cold as ice. "The FBI is none too happy about your lack of interest concerning the disappearance of Special Agent Starling, especially since we know that it was your department that practically begged her to lend a hand in the first place."

He knew no such thing, but as he observed the policeman's face losing several shades of color, he figured that his guess had not been too far from the truth. Several heads emerged from the cubicles to watch the scene. Lecter did not speak again for almost a minute, allowing the chief to fidget uncomfortably, not knowing that Clarice had done the exact same thing barely a week earlier to the policemen at the LaReine house. Those men who had used her because of her knowledge about him.

Dr. Lecter turned a few more pages in the case file. "It also seems," he said, poring over the words and statements upon the page, "that the Memphis police department did not even realize that the perpetrator was not Hannibal Lecter until Agent Starling provided her assistance."

The chief shook himself, "You're with that other agent, aren't you? Look, we already told her that we couldn't do anything to find Starling, so if you're with…um…" Apparently, this man had a tendency to forget names.

"Miss Mapp? In fact, I believe that I was sent to look after her. She is…dedicated, as you could see." Dr. Lecter's snub mixed with respect was completely lost upon the policeman's thick head.

A barking laugh erupted from his lips. "Huh, well try and keep her out of our way and we'll see what we can do."

Dr. Lecter removed his hands from the sticky table surface with an effort, leaving two patches of condensation upon the desk. "Very well, and if you take care to keep out of my way, I will see what _I_ can do," he said in a voice dripping with so much menace that even the thick-headed man could not fail to detect it. A tense moment as Dr. Lecter mentally berated himself for allowing himself to be goaded by the man's stupidity. His goal had been not to draw unnecessary attention. The cubicles fell silent as even more heads emerged to watch the interesting scene unfold.

Then, seemingly, the doctor's entire demeanor changed. He smirked at the policeman, dipping the bill of his baseball cap slightly. "Thank you for your assistance, Officer Jason Hoyt," he said, enunciating every syllable of the name carefully lightly. Then Dr. Lecter turned and made his way out of the silent hall, cradling the file with his injured hand.

An hour after Special Agent Peter Kent had departed, Hoyt continued to sit at his desk, staring into nothing. Then he let out a long, uneasy breath and began to type at his computer.

**MISSING: CLARICE STARLING**

A grainy photograph of Clarice slowly crept into existence upon the screen.

-----------

The suburb of Germantown is located just east of Memphis. With a population of around 37,000 people and, once every year, even more horses, the village-city has retained its feel of home and timelessness. Strict city ordinances forbid the presence of billboards, tall buildings, or neon signs, and there is a park located within a half-mile of nearly every house. The LaReine house is situated barely a block away from a small, seldom-used park and nestled among tall willow and birch trees. The house is old, built of faded bricks embraced by networks of ivy.

_The isolation would have prevented anyone from hearing the screaming_, Dr. Lecter noted.

The yellow police tape surrounding the LaReine house was loose, grimy, and trodden upon the ground yet retained some of its garish incongruity with the environment despite the mud and grass stains imprinted upon the yellow and black. When Dr. Lecter pulled up beside the driveway in a filthy rental pickup, there were only two cars present. A battered Memphis police cab and an equally battered Toyota Echo. The slam of the pickup door was harshly discordant with the silent environment. The crunching sounds of his steps through the newly dead leaves were less so.

Dr. Lecter stepped over the limp yellow tape and mounted the brick steps to the front door. He caught something out of the corner of his left eye and turned his head to behold a glistening windchime swaying slightly in his presence. The ornament seemed to be made of gilded discs hanging from golden threads of differing lengths and stood out boldly against the black walnut front door. Dr. Lecter watched the windchime move, caressed by the breeze so gently as not to make a sound. His eyes flickered with a forgotten memory.

Like a whisper of fine silk, Dr. Lecter turned upon his heel and pushed open the door perhaps a bit more forcefully than he ordinarily would have. A blast of sound assailed his ears the moment he entered the house, and he beheld Ardelia Mapp leaning over the table of the police officer sitting in the front hall, waving a rolled-up newspaper over her head like a lasso, and yelling in his face.

"Don't you give me any more of that p.c. crap! I don't want coffee and I don't want to hear how sorry you are that you can't do anything to help me. My friend and the one agent who can help you solve this screwed-up case is missing, under 'suspicious circumstances,' so don't you fucking tell me it's not your problem!"

Dr. Lecter amused himself by watching the officer open and close his mouth like a goldfish as Ardelia stopped yelling long enough to breathe.

"I don't suppose you've seen _this_ have you?" Ardelia slammed the newspaper down on the table in front of the officer as if it were a piece of raw meat.

"I already know about the case in St. Louis…"

"Oh? So your department is as incompetent with keeping up with the recent news as it is with everything else? Read the damn headlines."

**COPYCAT STRIKES AGAIN!!** screamed the front page.

"Let me summarize for you. Yesterday night, a sheep and horse rancher from Montana checks on his stock before heading in for the evening. He hears some whining and bleating from the back of the barn and thinks it's a wounded creature. Heads back to check. Next morning, the neighbors find him hanging from the rafters with third degree burns over 70 percent of his body."

Mapp tossed a crime scene photograph of the half-scorched body of the rancher dangling from a noose fashioned from a whip. "Name: Herman Lanning." A pause. "None of the burns are post-mortem."

Dr. Lecter tilted his head as he regarded the photograph with something approaching admiration in his eyes.

_Savonarola, the radical priest, traitor to Italy, and, however briefly, overthrower of the Medicis had spent the final minutes of his life thrashing about upon the gallows like a dying carp, his body in flames. Pope Alexander Borgia had watched triumphantly as his victim writhed in the agony of both rope and fire._

Dr. Lecter wondered if the killer had remembered to employ the torture Savonarola had suffered before his execution. He remembered another detail from Mapp's story quite well.

_A sheep and horse rancher from Montana…_

If Dr. Lecter continued to harbor any doubts regarding Clarice's predicament, they drifted into oblivion at that moment.

Mapp held the photo inches in front of the officer's face, almost basking in perverse delight at the way the man's face twisted in disgust. _Damn, why do I always have to deal with the rookies?_ "If you don't want something like this to happen again and have your department disgraced in the process, I suggest you get busy finding Clarice Starling." Mapp was breathing rather heavily as she and the officer locked eyes, or rather; she locked eyes with his forehead as he looked down and mumbled incoherencies. This was a low blow, especially for her, but desperation was no longer an adequate description of her current emotions and she was willing to do anything, _anything_…

The officer was trembling under her gaze and his mouth continued to open and close randomly. "I…I can't…"

Mercifully for him, the fax machine began to whine at that very moment and all three heads turned toward the paper that the machine was spitting out. Nearly half a minute of silence passed before the officer could remove the paper from the apparatus. Some color returned to his face as he scanned the contents of the message. Removing a tack from his desk drawer, he turned toward Mapp with a weak smile smeared upon his lips and attached the "Missing" poster on the billboard behind the desk. The blurry quality of the photograph of Clarice allowed the casual observer to distinguish no more than her slim build and the color of her hair.

"You see, ma'am, even now we're…" His voice trailed away as he saw the expression on Mapp's face.** One could look upon Mapp's face at that moment and observe anger, pity, desperation, and murderous intent simultaneously combating for expression.**

"Oh, that's just _perfect_," said Mapp in a sibilant hiss that Hannibal Lecter might have envied. She gripped the edge of the table with shaking hands. "I once made one of those for my lost dog when I was a child. I commend you and your entire department; you've finally raised Agent Starling to the level of a _dog_."

Suddenly, she whirled and faced Dr. Lecter, as if noticing him for the first time. Her jaw was trembling as she fiercely ground her teeth together in a desperate attempt to contain her unshed tears. "Who the hell are you and what are you doing here?" she spat in a voice like cracking ice.

The image of her devastated soul fascinated Dr. Lecter. He closed his eyes momentarily, allowing the scent of her delicious despair to fill his lungs. The only time he had ever savored pain this sweet was on that fateful day in Memphis; he had swallowed the echo of a tormented past.

_Ah, Miss Mapp. You care for her so much…_

And he consumed Mapp's soul in that very moment: her fear, anger, desperation, and love. All of it, he took and locked away in a forgotten corner of his memory palace. And then he nodded curtly in her direction. "Special Agent Pet—."

"If you were sent to keep an eye on me, you're wasting your time."

He held his hand up in a gesture of peace. "Nobody sent me here, Special Agent Mapp. I am here merely to offer a word of warning. Your emotions blind you, yet you welcome them with open arms. Good day, miss."

Dr. Lecter swept past both of them in a breeze of stiff black cloth, and Mapp thought she could hear the faint squeak of metallic joints over the sound of the golden windchime weeping in the breeze.

----------

Ariadne shivered despite her thick overcoat. The rumble of fake thunder made its way across the speakers. Twenty pairs of sprinklers sprayed a fine mist upon the neat piles of fruits and vegetables. Cahlin did not stir as a thin film of water condensed upon her face. A familiar bone-deep itching sensation crept upon the nub of her deformed jaw. She lifted her face closer to the cool mist.

Cahlin hated shopping. She found the weekly descent into the throngs of squabbling mothers, whining children, and bored-looking men nothing short of torture. However, on this particular Sunday afternoon, the store was mercifully deserted.

She removed a yellow bell pepper from its leafy bed with a gloved hand. Through the tint of her dark glasses, the pepper appeared brown. The glasses also did an excellent job of hiding her smoke-seared eyes and the smudges of ash that were still clinging onto her eyelids. Cahlin polished the vegetable absent-mindedly with the edge of her coat sleeve, a new golden bracelet jangling upon her wrist. She deposited the pepper in a bag along with three others. Clarice would appreciate the treat in her dinner tonight.

With vicious delight, Ariadne turned her shopping cart toward the frozen meats section.

~*~*~*~


	10. The Dark Island

**Labyrinth of the Burning Heart**

--------------

By Jstarz9237 and Aine Deande

**Chapter 10**

**The Dark Island**

One need not be a Chamber--to be Haunted--   
One need not be a House--   
The Brain has Corridors--surpassing--   
Material Place--  
  
_--Emily Dickinson (poem #670)_  
  
~*~*~*~

  
Sunday, August 26, 2001

  
Cold water was poured into the saucepan almost carelessly and the hand withdrew quickly, knowing that the marriage between oil and water would once again be rejected. And indeed, the drops of oil danced about like furious imps and sizzled in their hurry to jump out of the pan. Cahlin gave the smoking saucepan the merest of glances, concentrating all her attention on the yellow bell pepper that was rapidly degenerating into slices under her sharp knife. A flick of her wrist and all the slices were tossed into the saucepan. Cahlin hovered about the range like a fairy, adding chopped onions, dashes of salt and pepper, and various other spices in small increments.   
  
If there was one thing that Clarice could not complain about during her captivity, it was the food. Cahlin had observed that, barring the pale face caused by lack of sunlight, Clarice had a much healthier tone in her skin and her face was fleshing out nicely_. Too many meals of pizza and liquor_, Cahlin chided silently.   
  
As the water level in the saucepan went down, Cahlin shifted through her supply of plates, finally emerging from the cabinet with a large silver platter in her hands. The timer on the oven chimed. Putting on protective gloves, Cahlin slid a pan out of the oven, breathing in the scent of roasted meat, seasoned and cooked to perfection. She had, after all, learned from the best.   
  
Quickly the two chops of meat were placed on the silver platter along with the sizzling bell peppers. Cahlin then walked over to a nearby drawer and removed a small object. After bending and testing its strength, she slid it firmly into a piece of meat and covered the wound and the rest of the meat with a dark, thick sauce. As a final thought, Cahlin turned to the table in the center of the kitchen where a tall vase stood, overflowing with flowers. With scissors she clipped a tiny white cluster of three flowers, ignoring the petals that fluttered to the table at this intrusion. She set the flowers carefully on the side of the platter, safe from the juices of the meat and vegetables. A feast fit for Nero. The flowers looked so small and forlorn, belying their significance.   
  
In the Victorian language of flowers, the white chrysanthemum is the symbol for truth.   
  
Cahlin turned back to the bouquet on the kitchen, breathing in the varied scents. A faint smile appeared on her face as memories, buried in gritty catacombs like so many cobwebs, shook off their dust and demanded attention.   
  
--------------------  
  
She had never known the name of the town where she had grown up. The one wooden sign that bore the name of the place had long since faded under the everlasting sun, leaving only the last four letters visible: _--ergo_. It must have been fate's idea of a sick cultural joke. Life moved with the sluggishness of molasses, ten years stale within its tinted glass jar. Rachel distinctly remembered the "mud days" of summer where the dirt roads dried up so much that the sky would dump brown rain to replenish the filth.  
  
Ergo, as the town came to be called in her mind, was located twenty miles from the Maryland border and five miles from Harpers Ferry, where John Brown had staged his disastrous raid that would eventually foment the Civil War. She lived in the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia, a tiny crescent-shaped county attached to the main state by a thread and then tossed out of mind like an annoying hangnail.   
  
The Cahlin family lived on the east end of the main road, and the boundary between their backyard and the woods beyond was lost among rolling green hills. The house was two stories tall with a perfectly square foundation and a woodshed roughly attached to the building as an afterthought. The mailbox in their yard was carved into the shape of a Holstein cow and was painted in faded black and white. The box stood half a foot higher than the neighboring mailboxes and leaned far enough into the road to annoy the mailman immensely. For this reason and for others, neighbors generally disliked the Cahlins.   
  
Rachel's father had perished a month after Margie was born when he had driven their only car off the road in a drunken stupor and into an oak tree. Both their father and the car were determined to be beyond repair. Their mother dealt with their new-found poverty by pretending it did not exist. She never left the house without wearing every piece of jewelry she owned, bobbing her head and curtsying at imaginary admirers. Rachel and Margie both grew talented at inventing reasons to avoid her.   
  
The majority of both their childhoods were spent among the hills between their house and the woods. The games they played upon the green sward were enough to convince the neighbors that the entire Cahlin family was a lost cause.   
  
"Turn the boat, men, turn it!" screamed Rachel, swaying upon her grassy deck and tugging at her bonds woven from tender young saplings. "Can't you hear their song? It's beautiful…" Her face contorted with mock agony. Sailor Margie gamely ignored her, paddling onward with her birch oar. Her ears were stuffed full of candle wax scavenged from the dinner table last night. With barely a twinkle in her eye, Rachel would switch stories, yodeling a battle cry to the sky as Queen Hippolyta of the Amazons. Rarely, Margie would steer the game into her own scenarios, her favorite scene involving Frodo Baggins suffering from the bite of a Mordor blade.   
  
But it was Rachel who had found the battered volume of Greek mythology in the attic. Rachel who read and reread the stories every night, blocking out the sound of her mother singing Charlie Daniels Band at the top of her lungs. By the time that the limp pages had disintegrated from all the attention, Rachel was hungry for more. She barricaded herself inside the town's tiny library for days on end, with Margie bringing her a sack lunch at mealtimes. When Rachel returned home, the rolling hills behind their house became the treacherous crags of Mt. Olympus, the snowy wastelands of Siberia, or the aquatic grandeur of Atlantis. Margie would listen with the eagerness of a Confucian scholar as Rachel regaled her with tales of alien lands.   
  
Rachel did not care for worldly tales. She could not bear to read anything that did not send her millions of miles away from Ergo. She had once read the first few chapters of _Grapes of Wrath_ and then spent the next month teaching herself Latin in the attempt to drown her disgust. And she didn't stop there. Rachel developed a fascination with the Classical and Romance languages and was able to speak Latin, Greek, French, and Italian semi-fluently by the time she turned fourteen. The word "prodigy" was never spoken around the sisters, even when Rachel and Margie held their covert conversations that shifted from English to Italian to Greek. Instead, the neighbors preferred to whisper of demons and speaking in tongues.   
  
Being ostracized by all residents of Ergo bothered them only at Christmas, the only time they ever went to church. The preacher would rage about the damnation of witches and heretics, all the while stealing sidelong glances at the Cahlin sisters. Then they would escape out among the Christmas snowfall, perhaps heading home to tend to Margie's roses. She had cultivated a bed of the blood-red flowers yearly since Rachel had read her _The Little Prince_. The roses occupied a permanent place upon the windowsill above the kitchen sink. Margie had recently saved up enough money to buy several years' supply of hybrid tea rose seeds, and when they bloomed, there was nothing in all of West Virginia that could compare to the sight. Their mother never seemed to notice them. Her blank eyes would stare out the window while she washed dishes, even when the sunbeams shone through the translucent rose petals and scattered shadows of red upon her face.   
  
When Rachel was twelve, by process of dirty jokes, whispered secrets, and nasty songs, she learned of sex and had spent nearly an hour relating the information to her sister. It might have been around this time that the sisters began to grow apart.   
  
Two years later, they left Ergo for the first time, riding the five miles to Harpers Ferry in the back of a hay truck. Wandering into the noisiest and liveliest building in town, they unwittingly descended into the Underworld. Margie shrank away from the blinking strobe lights and free-flowing alcohol, but Rachel was hypnotized… the gyrating bodies and pulsating music surrounded her and embraced her like a mother. Margie was reminded of the young Clytia with her first glimpse of Helios, the sun god. The nymph had been hopelessly smitten by the sight and was transformed into a sunflower, destined to spend the rest of her days following the sun's slow and steady journey across the sky.   
  
When a gangly teenager asked them for a dance, shouting to make himself heard above the music, Rachel grasped his hands and followed him into the seething mass of bodies with a laugh of someone happily surrendering to madness.   
  
For days afterwards, Margie watched every evening as the same car pulled up to their house. The driver would embrace her sister before taking her away and returning her well after midnight. After a year, the car changed. Then it changed every month, then every week. In Ergo, the whispers and gossip grew. Their mother retreated ever further into her own world. Margie turned all her attention to her roses, choosing to leave her sister to her own devices and ignoring her nagging feelings of dread. This year's bed of roses wilted and grew limp for several weeks before blooming more fully than ever before, as if they suspected they would never have the chance to flourish again.   
  
When Michael Bermuda first appeared in Ergo, he appeared suddenly, as if he had fallen from the heavens. Rachel had been in the kitchen, washing dishes and staring through the streaked glass into the front yard, a little bit of her mother's faraway look visible on her face. One moment the view of the yard consisted of brown grass and a single black raven pecking for scraps of food by the curb. The next moment the raven had let loose a most unpleasant screech and flapped off into the sky and Michael Bermuda was standing by the mailbox, shading his eyes against the bleak winter sun.   
  
The thing that struck Rachel first about his appearance was his posture. Leaning back slightly at his hips and supported unnecessarily by a black cane, he seemed to lead himself simultaneously with his groin and his head. He was hunched over slightly, as if he expected the world to stoop to accommodate him.   
  
Even from far away, Rachel could see that his clothes were expertly cut and tailored; he was wearing black shoes and a tan business suit that blended well with the withered grass. He was looking up and down the street now, finished with his examination of their mailbox. A flying saucer parked in their front yard might have looked less out of place than him. From the direction of Harper's Ferry, the faint toll of a church bell could be heard on the breeze.   
  
The front door sighed lazily as Rachel walked down her disused driveway toward him. Her hands were wet and slightly soapy. Michael Bermuda lifted his head to meet Rachel's golden eyes. His face was not unpleasant to look at; his features were comprised of well-tanned skin and sharp angles that made him look like a bird of prey. He could have been handsome were it not for his eyes. Brutal, piercing green that caused those he looked upon to smolder rather than blaze. Rachel's first impression was that his eyes were flashy, cheap, and shallow. Over the following weeks, however, she came to realize that almost everything about Michael was merely a front. Beneath the paper-thin sparkle of his green eyes was a dull opacity like polished aventurine that hid his soul with a shroud more impenetrable than death.   
  
Introductions were brief. He spoke with a soft, perfectly-clipped tone with a hint of New Jersey accent. He was 28 years old and his father's funeral was currently tolling the church bells in Harper's Ferry. Michael was now the sole owner of their pharmaceutical company based in Baltimore. Rachel asked few questions, a spark of ravenous hunger apparent in her eyes.   
  
"The pallbearers were boring me. Each one felt the need to give their own unique opinion of how great a man my father was." He yawned. "Did you know that it _is_ possible to count the number of hairs in someone's beard?"   
  
"Did you love him?"   
  
"My father? What does it matter, he's pushing up daisies now. At least he should be, if they've stopped yapping long enough to put him in the ground."   
  
Rachel should have been offended by his self-absorption, but she found it impossible. There would be many more times when Rachel would choose to blind herself with her emotions. The rest of their conversation faded out of memory. But she remembered when he had turned on her, grasping her hands in both of his and forcing her eyes to stare into his. They knew each other then; they saw their past and possible futures. They saw the iron cages built around both their souls; their detachment from their places in society. Fear, love, lust, hate. They would come to know all of those, in the following years, and come to depend on them for their own impossible existence. In the realm of psychology, the term "symbiosis" does not carry the meaning of "living together". Instead, it defines a mutual parasitism, both parties unable to live without the agony of the other.   
  
Margie watched the interaction in the front yard from her window. She could hear no dialogue, but she didn't need to in order to figure out what was happening. What was happening yet again. But this time... this time as the man took her sister's arm in his and led her down the road, she felt as though something large were pulsating within her mind, intent on dashing through the walls of her skull. She felt like shrieking with madness.  
  
During the weeks that followed as Michael courted her sister, Margie could not prevent the way her skin prickled every time he drew near. Rachel's room began filling with exotic gifts of love. Quills made from peacock feathers. Jade pendants depicting every animal of the Chinese zodiac. Rain sticks filled with polished grains of rice. And always the dresses, each one more exquisite than the one before. After barely a month, the ring was presented. A surprisingly lightweight platinum band supporting a small diamond that betrayed its grandeur whenever the light hit it, as it would then glow with the fire of a thousand suns.   
  
Her sister and mother managed to make the house shake to its foundations that day. Margie had been forced to sit in the living room with the most unwelcome guest as mother and daughter screamed at each other for nearly an hour, storming from one room to another. Margie kept track of their progress by watching the pattern of dust raining down from the trembling ceilings.   
  
"How dare you? How dare you do this without breathing a word of it to me? And now you expect me to welcome him into the family!"   
  
"I'm eighteen, mum, I can do whatever the hell I want--"   
  
"You watch your mouth, young lady!"   
  
Margie had observed Michael's face as they listened to Rachel and her mother rage. His face had never changed from the expression of amused confidence he had worn when he had strolled into their house that day, dressed to attend a presidential banquet. For once, their mother wasn't being a fool, Margie thought. She could feel the aura surrounding Michael as well as Margie could.   
  
Rachel fairly skipped downstairs a few minutes later, a light suitcase in her hands. Michael's gifts had been packed and carted off the day before, as Rachel had expected this unpleasantness to happen. She plopped the suitcase into Michael's hands, laughing as she turned toward Margie. "Well, that's it then. I'm finally free of that bitch." Her eyes blazed with something that Margie had never seen before. Margie looked at the strange face before her with something beyond sadness in her gaze. Then she turned and walked up the stairs without a word, intent on comforting her mother.   
  
The sisters would not speak to each other again for five years.   
  
And throughout all this, Michael Bermuda never stopped smiling.   
  
------------   
  
True to his nature, Michael lost no time booking them onto a cruise ship that propelled them across the Atlantic Ocean and into the Mediterranean. Thus began the most blissful period of Rachel's life. It lasted about a month; during which Rachel stared and stared at the foreign shores and listened to the hustle and bustle of passengers from every corner of the earth squabbling, laughing, enjoying the pleasant May breeze upon the deck and watching the world slip by. The month passed before they reached their destination on the island of Cyprus, not far off the coast of Greece.   
  
Cyprus's landscape is one of infinite contrasts, from its fertile central plain to the cool vine-clad foothills; the majesty of the cedar valley in which wild indigenous moufflon roam; mile after mile of sandy shores with secluded beaches to seek out, and hundreds of villages to explore each with its own tradition and charm.  
  
They were married with great pomp and circumstance in a large, airy church with a view of the rolling sea. As the incense burned and white doves fluttered among the rafters, Rachel looked off toward the shoreline and thought she could see Aphrodite, the goddess of love, rising from the foam and spray with the light of Olympus in her eyes.   
  
They spent the rest of the day in a marketplace, making their way through the throngs of giggling children that reached up in awe to touch Rachel's white silk dress. She later impressed her husband by bargaining with a particularly stingy shopkeeper in flawless Greek. The old man finally smiled, showing two rows of perfect teeth. "Okay, the lady wins. Here." And he pressed a gold chain, light as spun sugar, into her hand.   
  
Before retreating to their villa, Michael and Rachel decided to dine in the prestigious, world-renowned restaurant Efharisto. The name meant "Thank you" in Greek. Michael knew the proprietor and so a special table with a view of the ocean was ensured with no particular difficulties. Rachel took the opportunity to taste youvetsi: braised lamb in tomato sauce, herbs and white wine with pesto, topped with Feta cheese. Michael ordered mousakas – tender slices of baked eggplant and freshly ground lean lamb sauce, topped with a creamy sauce she could not identify and freshly grated cheese.  
  
The villa that Michael had rented rose in two stories of terracotta walls, the complexion of the material reminding Rachel of wind-swept beaches. Inside, the walls were painted to look like the beach outside, and numerous windows opened to the darkened majesty of the sighing sea. Rachel had a hard time believing that they really stood inside an enclosed space. White French doors opened to a verandah with a pool set in the very middle.   
  
The bedcurtains and sheets carried beige and earth-toned colors. On the dresser beside the bed, stood Retsina, a traditional Greek wine treated with pine-tree resin, and Rachel let out a gasp of delighted surprise upon seeing it. There was also a bottle of Boutari, the local Cyprus wine, and two ready glasses. Rachel was especially fascinated with this crimson-colored wine, which was made from xynomavro, a red wine grape discovered in the early 1970s and grown near Mount Olympus. It was a younger wine which could be rustic, but when aged it developed a delightful, rounded and fruity character and was surprisingly soft on the palate.  
  
Rachel was so drunk upon the novelty of it all however that she barely remembered the exquisite taste of the wine. The smoldering embers that were both their eyes. The laughter and kisses turning into moans and the sound of ripping fabric. She sensed the heat inside her that grew and grew and then Michael's voice, vibrating against her chest but seemingly coming from miles away.   
  
_"Couldn't wait until marriage, could you?"_  
  
She would have answered if her mind had not been wrenched apart in that instant. They made the most violent love that night, again and again, until Rachel could barely breathe. Those hands moved over her body, touching, caressing, raping, tearing, clawing... A hand mashing her head down sideways as an inexorable weight savored its possession, shoving her face into the mattress.   
  
_"Don't look! You hear me? You do what I say and you don't look at me, you bitch!"_  
  
She choked upon the taste of the fibers in the mattress, shuddering under their weight.   
  
_"I'll teach you what you should have waited for. This...and this..."_  
  
The reek of expensive wine filled her nostrils. It was sheer madness and she could do nothing but watch and feel as nerves exploded in her brain. The next morning he kissed her senseless, crooning, _"Did you know that I love you so much, baby? I do. I love you, I love you, I love you... "_  
  
She believed him. Oh, how she believed him then.   
  
-----------------------   
  
The door creaked and opened, and Clarice turned her head to see what entity had come to visit her in her coerced exile. Not that she didn't know who it would be. . . And yet, every time she saw that halo of red curls and the face of the woman whose smile was but a mixture of honey and venom, her heart sank back into its black pit wherefrom it had just leapt with hope.   
  
Cahlin entered with the silver platter in her hands. The golden chain about her neck gleamed in the faint lamplight. A question. "Did you sleep well?" No answer. Cahlin shrugged and placed the platter at a dresser by the bed. She lifted her hand to rub her reddened eyes still smudged with black ash.   
  
"Your dinner."   
  
Clarice blinked, looked at the meat at her side. It surely looked edible. Yet, somewhere in the back of her head, an alarm bell was ringing, loudly.   
  
"What is it?" she asked bluntly, then flinched as she heard Cahlin's laugh, booming out of her chest like a wind orchestra.   
  
"One does never ask, Clarice. . . it spoils the surprise." Again, that uncanny likeness to Dr Lecter's words. Clarice had long ago given up on trying to needle information from her captor: it was clear that whatever connection she had to Dr Lecter, how and why, was to remain information she would either willingly submit to Clarice's knowledge-hungry mind or kept a secret for the sake of splendid torture and banal amusement. Her sense of humor was also uncomfortably like the Doctor's.  
  
Yet, something was again nagging at the back of her brain, along with the alarm sirens still wailing throughout. _Meat. . . It could be anything, Starling, anything at all. What makes you think…?_  
  
"Is it lamb?" Again, the question seemed extracted from her mouth, reluctantly pried out of her. Had she no control over her own actions any longer? But her mind was dreary, still blurred by the drugs and numbed by her hunger. Still, she had to know.   
  
"Lamb?" Cahlin tasted the word in her mouth, tasted liquid iron. "Lamb, hmmm…" She smiled, again causing Clarice's stomach to contract in that strange concoction of longing and dread, half memory to the past and half fear for the future, if there was one for her left. She waited on Cahlin's impending clarification.   
  
"Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. What's it to you, Clarice? Afraid of some dead meat? Tsk, tsk… I very much doubt your _daddy_ would have been proud of that."   
  
Starling wanted to scream, wanted to jump up and dig her nails into the smiling face of the woman who was so impudently attacking the memory of her father. A woman seemingly not much older than herself. The handcuff kept her in place, but in her mind she was seething, boiling with black rage, ready to spit out an equally wounding remark…  
  
Then stopped. She stopped thinking, and even her breath stilled in her throat for a moment. Slowly, she raised her head once more to the sight of her nemesis, her eyes clear of anger and filled only with a curious look of confusion.   
  
"My father…" Clarice pondered her next words, then plunged right in front of her train of thought like only a deep-roller would. "What do you know about my father? And what makes you think I'd be afraid of that… of…" She stopped, deliberately now, and her eyes were once again ablaze with fire. "What is it you know about me."   
  
It wasn't a question, and so Cahlin didn't respond to her statement as such. She simply cocked her head to the side, doing a not wholly awry impersonation of an innocuous child.  
  
"What makes you think I know anything about you? Or rather…" Here, a corner of her mouth went up in a little smirk. "What makes you think I _don't_? Surely, little Starling, you realize how… _futile_… how pointless it would be for me to take a hostage and not have a clue as to whom I'm dealing with. There are ways in which one can obtain all the information you'd want about a person. Surely you as an FBI agent must know of these methods."   
  
Starling conceded, unwilling to admit too much to this woman. If she were wrong about her suspicion and Cahlin did indeed not know of the episode with the lambs and all that came from it, she did not wish to incidentally reveal that information to her kidnapper after all.   
  
And yet…  
  
A voice in the back of her head, nagging.   
  
_Remember now… not two days ago… the needle, going into your flesh… the fresh longing in your body as you woke up hours later, numbly aware of something having happened to your body, in your mind, the time that you were out… remember… She is lying, she is holding back...   
  
Remember Dr. Lecter, talking._  
  
And then she knew.  
  
"You drugged me," she stated, as sure of the fact now as she was of anything, as she was of herself. "You drugged me and then you questioned me about my life, about my father and possibly about Dr. Lecter." A beat, stretching. "You know about the lambs."   
  
Silence. Then, Cahlin brought her hands together and applauded, shortly yet effectively.  
  
"Bravo, Clarice. One step closer to your epiphany."  
  
And her hand disappeared into her pocket to take out the fine syringe.  
  
"Now… where were we?" she asked not five minutes later, with Clarice once again bound with a plethora of rope to the bed. She had not planned to drug her quite this soon, rather enjoying the look of utter horror on her captive's face as she realized the true contents of the meal she had prepared for her. She heard once more her words, pushed through clenched teeth:   
  
"I will - _not_ - eat that."   
  
"Oh?" Cahlin had questioned. "I thought we had just determined how ridiculous the notion is of being terrified of mere food? Meat won't bite you, you know - nor should it scream all too loudly." But Clarice's face had acquired sort of a closed, stiff determination and she had refused to say more.   
  
"Suit yourself." Cahlin had conceded for the time being, filling the syringe with straw-colored liquid. "Just so you know though, this will be the last meal you shall receive from me." She had paused effectively, then added: "Permanently."   
  
"Either eat your incubus, or let the hunger eat away at you until there's nothing but skin left on your body. Which should provide easy flaying for me - " Here she had stopped to enjoy the shock creeping over Clarice's pale face. _Ah. So easy to affect._  
  
Yet once more, the iron backbone of Clarice Starling had been evident in every tremor of her next words. "Do with me as you must. However, I will not condescend to being some sort of guinea pig for you to play with. If you wish to prey on my fear, forget it. I refuse to be frightened by you or… _that_." She had nodded at her dinner. "I also refuse to change who I _am_ merely for the benefit of entertaining you. I won't eat a bite of it, I'd rather die than…"  
  
"Ah," here Cahlin had interrupted her, "But you _will_ die, Clarice Starling. Don't you doubt that for a second. Indeed, I enjoy playing with you, as I enjoyed playing with all of my victims. It provides the necessary entertainment for what would otherwise be a normal butchery. But I was only trying to do you a favor."   
  
"A _favor_?" It sounded like Clarice would rather choke on the word. "Nothing you do to me could ever be considered a favor…"   
  
"You're a fool, Clarice," Cahlin had said with a lethal monotony in her tone. "You're a fool and a coward and you should be grateful I haven't killed you already... do not deem me an idiot. I am not Jame Gumb, I will _not_ fail in bringing you down. My plans for my victims never fail to come to fruition, sooner rather than later of course. However…   
  
"If you are so determined not to eat a bite of what I have so graciously prepared for you, that's fine with me. Nevertheless, you are being impudent, not to mention _rude_, to your hostess. The choice to eat is, of course, your own. But I stand with what I said earlier. You shall not receive another meal. Oh, not that I'd let you eat rotten meat…" She had waved away Clarice's horrified expression.   
  
"That would be below my manners. But every meal from here on will consist of only lamb, lamb, lamb. I _am_ doing you a favor, little, foolhardy Starling. Achilles knew that it was better to die a hero than live a coward. And I am ridding you of your demons… until all that remains is me. _Me_. I shan't tolerate any other fear to consume your soul, as you have succeeded in gaining my respect. Yes, little Starling…" She had repeated, in response to Clarice's snort of disbelief. "Respect. Hannibal himself said you were a warrior. _Act like one._"   
  
And with that, she had injected the needle into Clarice's vein, ignoring as she always did her cries of protest and pain.   
  
She sat now, on the edge of the bed Clarice was chained to, watching with malicious delight as the drugs overtook her system, worked its way into her head, clamping down with claws stronger than visible bonds, binding her within the horrors of her own mind. She was writhing on the bed now like a serpent would, thoroughly dead to the world.   
  
It was time to acquire some more _useful_ information from her, and Hannibal's, favorite plaything.   
  
"Where were we, little Starling? Ah, yes…" She reminded herself and her companion, licking her lips ever swiftly with a movement of her tongue, expeditious like a snake's.   
  
"I recall we were discussing your incubi the last time we chatted, no? Don't bother to gratify me with a response," she continued in her parody of a poised and courtly manner of speech, watching as Clarice's facial features contorted with old, ever painful memories.  
  
"I do not wish to embark on your tedious recollections of your traumatized childhood just now. In fact, I have a more mundane matter to ask of you." She let her voice drop to a tantalizingly low whisper, barely perceptible by the ear.   
  
"I want you to tell me how to contact Dr. Hannibal Lecter."   
  
-----------------------   
  
Clarice Starling remembered this feeling all too well. It was a sensation of floating, of drifting with the current, flowing in still water. Being nothing, needing nothing, only enduring the stillness, the heavy air that bore no technical weight, that only served to immerse her deeper and deeper into nonexistence.   
  
Flowing, flowing…  
  
A question, asked outside of herself. She strained to comprehend the meaning, not knowing why she bothered, yet deciphering its meaning out of habit.  
  
"Tell me… contact… Lecter."  
  
_Oh, does she want to know *that*?_ Clarice felt a sudden urge to giggle, glad as she was that she wouldn't have to release private knowledge about herself this time. She opened her mouth, or thought she did, yet no sound emerged from her lips…  
  
She tried harder. Mumbling, now. "Aaa… aaa… new… newwww… Doter… 'ter…"   
  
A sigh, of irritation perhaps? Straining again, this time the words are more distinct.   
  
"How did you communicate with Dr. Lecter?"   
  
_Oh, but that's easy. I was trying to tell you before._ Again, that strange impulse to relieve tension in her body with laughter. She wondered if what she were feeling was real or imagined, all she knew for sure was that it felt… out of place. She attempted once more to make herself discernible to her inquisitor, wanting nothing more than to appease this person, whose voice sounded so much like the Doctor's. . .   
  
"Aaaad… newspapaah… A… A… Aaron…"   
  
This wouldn't do, Cahlin rapidly realized. Apparently in her haste she had injected a little too much of the drug in Clarice's bloodstream. One syllable at a time would have to be the trick to obtain the facts she was after.   
  
"What medium did you use to communicate through?"   
  
She was fairly certain Dr. Lecter and Clarice had been in touch *somehow* over the past ten years. No matter what scenario she thought out, it seemed highly unlikely for Dr. Lecter to be the kind of person to pine away for a woman (Cahlin found her hand twitching at the very thought) if there had been no encouragement, no form of communication at all. She doubted *very* much Dr. Lecter would have come all the way back to the States, risking imprisonment all over again, and possibly the needle this time, had there not been.   
  
"How did the two of you communicate? Telephone? Letters?"   
  
This seemed to educe a more distinguishable reaction from Starling. Tongue clacking, she was able to say, "No. Phone. Letter… yes. He… me."   
  
"Dr. Lecter wrote to you?" Cahlin prompted. Yes, that did seem like the way. It would have compromised eager Special Agent Starling's career had it been discovered that she were communicating with an escaped felon. And if that were so, the revelation of this would have been all over the news. Since Cahlin had been keeping close watch on all things Lecter-related since his escape, it seemed highly unlikely that sensational news would have slipped her attention. Another way then.   
  
"How did you respond to these letters? You couldn't have done so out in the open, loyal as you were and are to the F.B.I…" She drew out the word like only Dr. Lecter had done before her, and Clarice shivered involuntarily. That had been the wrong approach, Cahlin knew instantly: her drugged opponent stayed determinedly silent.   
  
Hit by a sudden flash of insight, she added: "What medium were you advised by Dr. Lecter to make use of for - possible - responses?"   
  
Here, she had struck gold. Clarice's face lit up, glad she was able to give a straight answer this time, without offending either herself or Dr. Lecter. "News… paper. The… ads."   
  
"You were told by Dr. Lecter to place an ad in the newspaper?" Despite herself, Cahlin allowed her feelings to take over for the moment as a surge of warm admiration for Dr. Lecter flooded her heart. _Ever the brilliant one, Hannibal. Of course, the ads. The perfect solution to an otherwise compromising position for our mutual acquaintance. Yet…_  
  
"A codename was probably required. What codename was used?"   
  
Again, a clear answer. Now Cahlin understood what she had meant before. "A…A… Aaron. A. A. Aaron. Top of page."   
  
_Ah. Naturally._ "And what code was used to ensure the message was from you?"  
  
Clarice was positively smiling now. "Hannah… my horse."  
  
"Interesting," Cahlin dismissed the tedious information about her captive's old pet, and went straight to the point. "What newspapers, magazines?"   
  
This took Clarice a while to answer, as though thinking cost her more effort than usual. Which was of course rather logical, since she was drugged to the hilt. Eventually, Cahlin had them written down on the notepad she'd kept nearby, along with the codenames.   
  
_Chicago Herald-Tribune. National Enquirer… China Mail. You sure thought of everything, didn't you Hannibal?_ Again, she couldn't suppress a small, genuine smile. Not that the dupe at her side, who was currently drooling on her dirty T-shirt, would notice, anyway.   
  
"That will be all for today, Clarice." She stood up, but before she left the room decided to leave Clarice with a reminder of the past... something to occupy her time with as long as the drugs wouldn't wear out. Her voice turned back into Dr. Lecter's sibilant hiss.   
  
"Clariiiiccccee…" She drew out the last syllable of the name, as she imagined Dr Lecter would have done. The effect was immediate: Clarice's body went slack under the bonds and she lay motionless, hanging on her next word, whatever that might be.   
  
"Are the lambs still screaming, Clarice?"   
  
And with this, she closed the door. But long before she had reached the end of the hallway, the screaming of Clarice Starling had begun to fill the air, charging it with a taste of age-old sadness and forever reflected failure.

--------------


	11. Ariadne's Thread

**Labyrinth of the Burning Heart**

**------**

By Jstarz927 and Aine Deande

**Chapter 11**

**Ariadne's Thread**

Friday, August 30, 2001

The first thought that tumbled into Ardelia's mind upon entering Helen LaReine's house was: _This is what it must have been like for Clarice at Fredrica Bimmel's_. She had loitered for a moment on the brick steps before the entrance to the old mansion covered in ivy and dust for a moment, her body poised beneath the doorframe. The scent of mothballs and dried blood had drifted from the house on a little current of air. An uncharacteristic incertitude took hold of her.

Ardelia had served her fair share of search warrants in her career and she had always been able to dismiss her feelings of trespassing then in the line of duty. Not now. She was suddenly very aware of her surroundings and the fact that she was intruding upon a dead woman's home. Despite the fact that she had flashed her credentials at the local agents guarding the place from onlookers and therefore had a lawful right to be here, she still felt like she was breaking and entering. She had had a chance to cool down since last week.

After all, this wasn't some case she was working on. This wasn't business; this was personal. It was her last chance at finding out where Clarice might be. After this, there was nothing. No hunch. Not a clue. She needed to believe that she had done everything possible to find her friend. And though this reasoning steeled her resolution and determination, it also made her more susceptible to those nagging doubts that her conscience had never tired of dishing out despite how often she ignored them.

But she had swallowed the bile in her throat and stepped resolutely over the threshold. _Stepping into Clarice's shoes, am I..._ They seemed a little too tight. Just like the air in the antechamber seemed too difficult to breathe. Just beyond the foyer, beyond the living room, was where it had all happened. Where they had found LaReine's body... where...

_Stop it. You're not gonna get anywhere if you keep thinking like that._ Focus on the task at hand. Okay…where would the murderer have left any marks?

The most logical evidence would be on the body itself. But since the corpse had been removed from the crime scene quite some time ago, all that was left for Ardelia to do was to search the entire house, basement to upper floor, starting with the room she was standing in right now. No longer thinking of death and only of Clarice, she started searching.

The breeze carried the sound of the weeping windchime through the open front door into every room of the house. She could still hear it when she entered the foyer, still hear it when she set foot in the living room, the kitchen. It seemed to accompany her everywhere. She found she quite liked the sound. The pureness of the sound steadied her on some primal level, and assured her even more that she was doing what she had to.

Exactly what she was looking for, she didn't know. Clarice's profile of the killer had been sketchy at best, telling only who the killer wasn't and not who he was. And over the past few weeks, self-important examiners had taken the opportunity to alter the description until Clarice's original words were irrevocably lost. But that had not stopped Ardelia Mapp from trying to make up her own profile. This one, though he did not yet have a face to her, was obviously a show-off. It showed in his meticulous planning and choice of victims. This one was proud: he would have wanted to leave his mark on his work. 

And so Ardelia went looking for the signature.

Helen LaReine's house had her presence embedded into every room, every piece of furniture, every scratch on the walls carefully painted over. Though anything but tidy, the arrangement of her belongings suggested at the very least that she was a person that clung to routine. Ardelia judged this from the way Helen had placed her perishables and leftovers in the refrigerator, all stacked in neat Tupperware cartons labeled with self-determined dates of expiration. Also, the way in which she had cut the stems of her plants, cleanly and carefully as though they were conscious beings rather than flowers ­ _oh, she should *not* have made that comparison_ - showed that she was a highly organized character. Which made Ardelia do a double take when she found the half-dozen empty vodka bottles scattered behind the cleaning products under the sink, some of them broken.

What the…? This didn't fit her mental picture of Helen the happy housewife at all. Her eyes widened as that picture was warped even more when she found another bottle hidden inside a box of dog biscuits (_Where's the dog?_ she wondered aloud to herself, then realized the woman's husband had probably taken the dog when he'd moved out of the house. The date on the box suggested as much.), two more full bottles in a shoebox in a closet and one nearly empty one buried in the dirty laundry basket.

A closet alcoholic, in more ways than one, Ardelia registered. The thought was comical for a brief moment before she fought a sudden wave of nausea, as a memory of Clarice Starling resurfaced. Clarice sprawled out on the floor heaving the remains of her junk-food meal into the bucket Ardelia held out before her. _It will all end soon_, she had muttering soothingly. Then Clarice's stare had been upon her, hollowed out by disillusion, answering, _does it ever? Does anything ever end?_ And whatever else her friend might have wished to say was lost as she bent over the bucket again, retching and coughing, her tears mingling with vomit.

_Endless recollections blindly leading me along a string like a fucking puppet_, Ardelia thought furiously. She shrugged off the taste of this particularly vile one as, out of habit, she emptied the bottle she'd found in the laundry basket and put it under the sink with the rest of them.

She then took a pen from her breast pocket and wrote "Check BAC in body" on a Post-It note, which she stuck to the fridge. The police were bound to find it on their no doubt umpteenth time searching the place for evidence. Funny that they had never mentioned the wine before. 

It was with great trepidation that Ardelia Mapp eventually entered the sanctuary that was the late Helen LaReine's bedroom and put on a pair of latex gloves. As she pulled back all the shades and threw open a window to freshen the unbearably stuffy air, she noted that the room was decorated in the same falsely cheerful tone that she felt in the rest of the house. The wallpaper and bedspread both had the same garish floral design, dusty and muted colors smudged in some places with remnants of fingerprint powder.

A four-poster queen-sized bed with its curtains drawn back was pushed again one wall. Across the room on the opposite wall was a low dresser with an unbelievable amount of cosmetics placed on top before the vanity mirror. Ardelia picked up a small box, believing it to be a makeup kit, but upon opening the container, she discovered that it was in fact a music box. A plastic ballerina twirled in an eternal pirouette before a small mirror in the lid as the tinny synthetic notes of Debussy's "Claire de Lune" permeated the stillness. She set the box down and walked to the window across from the door. The view into the front yard was blocked by the dense foliage of a willow tree. She turned from the window and began to search the room.

An hour later, Ardelia was reaching under the four-poster with powder-stained gloves and was not all surprised to find another bottle under the bed, this one unmarked and half-full. She uncorked the bottle and sniffed. It was wine this time, the color of gold, she couldn't quite place it…

But beyond that, she had found nothing.

Nothing. The word echoed in the void that was her mind, now. Without being aware of it she had dropped the wine bottle, the liquid spilling over and soaking the carpet in a three-foot radius. _There was nothing._

Nothing to connect her to Clarice, to the murderer.

Nothing... How could there be nothing?

Ardelia sank to her knees on the carpet, burying her head in her hands, grasping handfuls of hair in powerless desperation. The ballerina of the music box still spun her pirouette, while the eerie notes of Debussy played throughout the otherwise soundless room. Ardelia felt rather like she were the only living presence in a long-dead house, and the feeling of loss and incompetence intensified.

This was it. She knew no more. This had been the last straw she'd grasped with all her might and it had proven futile. She was at the end of her coping, facing a dead-end street, lost with no sense of direction. Clarice would become as the victims she had tried for years to save from their tormenters and be left to the slaughter while she, little miss Mapp, Special *fucking* Agent Mapp would have to sit by and let it happen because she had no idea what to do.

Ardelia tried to smirk at the irony, but found herself crying instead. The salty substance traveled down her cheeks and dripped into her mouth with natural ease, even though it had been several years since she had last cried.

It was a sign of how desperate she felt. She was going to lose her best friend to this monster and there was nothing anyone could do about it. No Knight in Shining Armor to save her now. No Jack to keep the bloodhounds at the FBI away from her. No bloody Hannibal Lecter to pick her up from a barn full of pigs and carry her away, as Clarice had told her about during a brief spell of sobriety. Though whether that was a comfort or not Ardelia really didn't know anymore. Lecter certainly seemed to care as much as she did, although in a thoroughly twisted and sick sort of way... 

But it was of no use. Clarice was lost, doomed and lost, and Ardelia was only now beginning to face the total hopelessness of the situation. The ballerina was slowing now and the notes of the song grew further and further apart. With a cry of sheer frustration, Ardelia grabbed the music box and heaved it against the wall as hard as she could. The music ground to a halt, the top of the box tore off the hinges taking the ballerina and its pedestal with it. The bottom of the box fell over on its side and Ardelia looked in at the wires and batteries of the music box. At the carefully folded sheets of white paper stuffed into the sides of the box.

Impossible. _Impossible_, she thought even as she picked herself off the floor and scrambled toward the container, grabbing it and shaking all the paper from the bottom half of the mutilated music box. As she unfolded each sheet of paper, she feared for a moment that her expectations were once again falsely raised. The great majority of the letters were love notes, written to Helen from her ex-husband. Hardly daring to hope, Ardelia unfolded the last letter. Barely glancing at the name of the addressee, she looked instead at the signature. Helen LaReine. Helen had written this letter. Oh thank you, thank you, whatever divine being you might be, thank you. Ardelia's eyes moved down to the line below the signature. And froze.

For the date on the letter was Thursday, August 2, 2001. One day before Helen was found murdered and pierced like a voodoo doll in the very house that Ardelia had been searching for over two hours. Two days before Clarice had arrived in Memphis.

This had been her last letter.

--------------------

The battered white Honda Civic did not look out of place as it pulled into the small gas station in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, but the man that stepped out of the car and brushed the dust off his jeans before stepping toward the pump encouraged a few sleepy heads to peer at him through the front window of the convenience store. The man wore a white dress shirt, sunglasses and a baseball cap. He looked as uncomfortable and awkward in this casual wear as a bum in a tuxedo.

Hannibal Lecter had not passed a pleasant week. It had been five days since he had left Memphis in this hideous, but thankfully gasoline-efficient, vehicle and began his slow journey toward Washington, stopping frequently along the way to ask likely people if they remembered a FBI agent passing through. The picture of Clarice Starling that he had printed from the Quantico database was worn and grimy from endless exposure to the sun. The process was long and time-consuming and so far ineffective, but Lecter could think of no more efficient means to hunt his quarry.

As the tank of the rented Civic was filling, Lecter walked far enough away from the station to escape the odious fumes of gasoline. Rolling hills surrounded either side of the highway that had been Clarice Starling's most likely path back home on that fateful night. Lecter took in the scent of West Virginia. A church bell tolled faintly upon the breeze. He could taste the fragrance of sun-warmed grass and well-oiled machinery. There was also another smell lurking under the stagnant breeze. This scent he had not experienced for the longest time. Peace.

A sigh. Clarice Starling had long deserted this place.

Lecter passed the Civic on his way into the convenience store just in time to hear the pump click shut. The customers in the store had decided that the man was no longer of interest to them and had returned to their newspapers and cigarettes. Lecter picked up a copy of the _National Enquirer_ from the newsstand and brought it to the counter. He had to cough once to get the cashier's attention.

Afterwards, in his car, parked on the side of the highway, Hannibal Lecter removed his sunglasses and studied the paper. He had to flip past several articles concerning the discovery of the cryogenically frozen body of Elvis before reaching the part that he wanted. He started thinking about reconsidering his choice of correspondence. Nothing new in the copycat case, except the ever-present outrage. Ten murders in barely two months and law enforcement was nowhere close to even a suspicion of a suspect. Lecter pored over a particularly heated editorial lobbying to rewrite the entire American judicial system. _It is rather amusing how they complain so much about the way things are, but when someone breaks the rules, they condemn him and lock him away._

Against his better reason, Lecter began to feel the slightest empathy toward the killer. They had both paid the same terrible price for their freedom. Was Clarice then the only reason he was bothering to track this man? Clarice…ah, there was an enigma as great as himself.

He began flipping more pages of his newspaper to keep himself from thinking too long on that matter. He had to find her first. Out of habit, he turned to the personals section, his eyes automatically traveling to the top of the page.

There was the slightest hitch in his breathing as he beheld the familiar name. Hope unwittingly floated to the surface of his mind. Yet even before he had finished reading the brief ad, Lecter had no illusions as to who was writing to him. The killer must have gleaned his contact information from Clarice. And the manner of the writing…memories solidified and begged for attention, rising from the oubliettes and descending from the rafters to mingle in a storm that put nature to shame.

_A.A. Aaron—_

My warrior, the maiden is waiting. No golden thread to guide her way. The beast roars in hunger... and I fear she is lost.

There was no signature. Lecter did not doubt that the killer had known the code name to use, but he had left it off purposefully. He wanted Lecter to find him. He had thrown down the gauntlet.

Very well then.

Something was begging for elucidation in Lecter's mind, the completion of a puzzle was at hand. He need only to take it…Lecter gripped the steering wheel tightly in his hands as the oubliettes in his memory palace yawned their terrible mouths. The imagined scent of charred flesh and blackened bones assaulted his mind. He held onto the steering wheel until the nausea had passed like the breath of a tidal wave.

The moment his head began to clear, Lecter had opened the case file and was rifling quickly through the victim descriptions. He knew now, what he should have seen before. Do you remember your golden thread that guided the hero's path through the labyrinth? There were fourteen victims every year, sent to the island to soothe the beast's hunger: seven men and seven women. His finger moved quickly down the victim list even as the oubliettes in his memory palace threatened to fly open once again.

Ten murders so far. Six women in a row, no doubt Clarice would be the seventh, saved until the end. Six women, followed by that man, H. Locke, then two more men. No…there was one extra murder. The woman: Helen LaReine. A break in the pattern. In the back of his mind, Lecter once again saw the golden windchime at the LaReine house swinging in the breeze. Helen…Helen…why did the killer choose you? He knew the answer even as he highlighted the name and wrote in the margins: Don't you believe that these killings are too well orchestrated to afford this mistake?

Lecter capped the highlighter, still no closer to a conclusion than before. _If only she were here…_NO. Lecter furiously shut the door upon that unexpected thought. But memories, as Ariadne had discovered long ago, were too fickle for mental boundaries. The slightest trigger would bring them back full force, try as one might to suppress them. Images were returning now. The ever-present rhythm of the grandfather clock, long walks in a garden, heart's blood spilt on the ground, the cold lights of the asylum, the flames reaching ever higher into the sky…Lecter remembered her now as he had known her. If only he could have known the entirety of her journey…

-------------------

_The first five years of Rachel Bermuda's marriage rushed by like water from a leaky faucet. Time would blur, hurrying past her so fast she could barely catch her breath before slowing to an unbearable crawl. She had fleeting memories of Michael taking her all around the world. From Greece to Africa to Brazil, back to Europe, London, Geneva, Florence, Rome._

_On their first night in Paris he hit her across the face during an argument over something she had long since forgotten and then refused to let her go out for the next three weeks while the bruise healed. During that time, he brought her breakfast in bed and French wine in the year of her birth every night. On the day that her face had healed sufficiently for Michael to allow her out again, he took her to the Place des Vosges and showered her with golden feathers that he had bought at a souvenir shop in Venice._

_Five months passed before he even brought her home. Five months of memories that flowed together and clamored for space with her memories of the States until they battled themselves into a frenzied mass that Rachel could not begin to sort out and did not attempt to. Even after Hannibal taught her the art of the memory palace, she wound up those five years worth of memories like a ball of twine and locked it securely inside a nondescript room of her palace. She had no desire to revisit them._

_But sometimes threads would pull loose._

_Their house was located a few miles away from Baltimore. The backyard ended in a cliff that dropped a hundred feet before ending in the jagged rocks of the bay. The Bermuda mansion was big and imposing enough to put the Cathedral of Notre Dame to shame. The house was built with the same Gothic architecture and none of the cathedral's sense of place. Spires and buttresses were nestled alongside blue slate and white marble. The house seemed so eager to display its wealth that it had lost all sense of purpose: impressive architectural examples of several different cultures clamoring for space and grandness in the façade._

_The road in front of their house was never used except by the two of them and the occasional gawker emerging from the forest on the other side of the road to stare at the eyesore. Rachel had thought the façade of the house hideous from the start but could not help falling love with the interior. Michael collected all forms of artifacts and enjoyed displaying them to no end. She could wander from one hallway to another and feel like she was moving from Paris to Athens. The temples of ancient Greece and the natural beauty of the Orient both grudgingly accepted homes in the endless hallways of the mansion. The gifts he had given her during the days he courted her eventually found places in these hallways._

_The majority of Rachel's time in the house was spent alone. Michael left the care of their home in her hands, and she had to scramble to learn how to cook and clean and everything else she had ignored in her life up until then. At least until she could hire enough servants. Contact with Ergo was limited to Michael's monthly check that helped to cover the cost of maintaining the house. The thank-you notes sent in return were colder than cold. Rachel's mother had retired years ago, and Michael had offered to pay for her mother's admittance to a home. Margie had adamantly refused._

_Michael often complained about her distant relatives good-naturedly, laughing even as Rachel saw his eyes cloud with murderous annoyance. Her husband had always most closely resembled a sentient time bomb, ticking away the seconds that only he could count. He had first praised her grasp of languages and had even paid for lessons in Latin and German for a few years. But then, somewhere around the time he turned 30, he stopped all her language lessons and forbid her from taking any more. At the same time he eliminated her name from their bank account, requiring her to consult him whenever she wished to buy anything, no matter how small._

_Their love was as volatile as their hate. Soothing caresses could quickly be followed by screams, blows, and tears. Michael usually avoided hitting her face and Rachel suspected it was because he took her out to company parties often and the bruises would have been too visible. He enjoyed picking out dresses for her on those occasions that even with her limited sense of fashion, Rachel could see were exquisite. The dresses were often accompanied by golden jewelry, always golden. Michael enjoyed adorning his little jewel and watching her glow like the fire from the sun. The outfits were also usually rather revealing and Michael knew it, yet he would still look daggers at anyone he suspected of admiring her too closely. _

_One of his favorite topics to discuss in bed was that of his heirs, and Rachel tried to steer him away from the idea as much a possible. When he got on the topic of children, he became even more unpredictable than usual. Rachel rarely passed through those nights without pain and, when morning arrived, the ever-present confessions of love coupled with gentle kisses. And always later in the day, when Michael was safely away at work, Rachel would pad downstairs to the kitchen where the cook would give her a pill to swallow. The cook exchanged these piddling capsules of freedom and her promise of silence for secret pay raises that often lowered the salaries of other servants in the house. This small rebellion, instead of evoking pride, made Rachel feel lower than low and after taking the pill would lie in bed all day, as if sick._

She couldn't help loving him even as she hated him. She hated his reedy, snobby voice. She loved how his caress could make her melt and how he could look into her with a light in his emerald eyes rivaling that of the Silmarils. Even as one day he dangled her over the cliff, a single arm around her waist, those eyes consumed her mind more than the thought of plummeting to jagged rocks and crashing waves below. Those eyes danced and blazed like a hypnotizing inferno as he screamed in her face.

"What would you do if I ever left you?"_ she had asked. He had dragged her to the edge of the precipice in the next second. "You thinking about that?! I'll shove you over and break you on the rocks, that's what I'd do."_

_A moment crystallized in time as the wind tore into her hair and fingers and left them numb as he dipped her over the cliff in an obscene parody of a dance._

_His face softened. "But why, baby? Haven't I given you everything?" He kissed her gently. "Everything you've ever wanted?" He forced her lips open and drew his tongue over her teeth. "What else do you want? Just tell me, baby, don't be scared..." He embraced her there on the edge of the cliff, the wind chilling their trembling hands and her body swaying over the deathly drop. She would not answer._

_A week later he raked the fire poker across her stomach for failing to wash his favorite shirt in time for a meeting. The scorching pain made her double over._

I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry… 

_She had wept that day more than ever, rivulets continuing to stream down her face long after Michael had fallen asleep, his mouth open in a snore loud enough to be annoying. A baseball had broken his nose when he was ten and he had had trouble breathing ever since. His snoring had been growing worse, he had explained, because of the extra energy he expended everyday caring for her._

_When her tears had dried, Rachel reached down to touch the raised skin of the burn, a shiny patch shaped like a crescent moon. A sharp intake of breath as her fingers caressed the tender skin. But there were no tears of pain._

_She would not weep ever again._

_That was in the fourth year of their marriage. Rachel waited another year before returning to Ergo. She chose a time when Michael was away on a business trip and believed her to be sick and so promised not to disturb her with phone calls._

_The sight of the super-charged Jaguar roaring down the dirt road in Ergo before skidding into a driveway that had not been used for twenty years must have looked to the residents like the four horsemen of the Apocalypse. For that or whatever other reasons, Rachel did not see a single soul as she slammed the car door and looked upon Ergo for the first time in five years._

_Time had completely passed the town by. The storefronts looked the same, albeit paler and dirtier from five years worth of sun and mud days. Rachel saw that the signpost displaying the name of the town had finally been replaced. The town was now officially named Ergo._

_She turned to face her house. Margie and her mother had taken good care of it over the years. The façade had a new coat of paint and the yard had been tended to, with birch saplings and bushes of chrysanthemums decorating the grass. Courtesy of Michael's money, no doubt. The woodshed attached to the side of the house, however, had been reduced to a pile of boards on the ground. The roof had fallen in and nobody had bothered repairing it. They had never used it anyway._

_Fears that her family might have moved away were eased when Rachel saw the roses still occupying their place in the windowsill. Their colors were paler now, pinkish-brown rather than red. She knocked on the door lightly. There was no bell._

_Rachel expected to wait outside her house for ages, but in mere seconds she sensed the presence behind the door. Moments slid past like water as the presence hesitated, penetrating the wooden door as an accusing glare. Rachel squirmed. And then the door opened, neither slowly nor quickly, but politely as if greeting a guest and Margie was standing there exactly as Rachel had remembered her, with her hair held back in a simple ponytail and worn but clean clothes draped on her body like loose skin. Only her face was different, and not in her current expression of gentle curiosity but in her skin, paper-thin and several shades paler than before._

_And it wasn't only her skin. The space behind Margie's eyes appeared to be drawn-in, closed-off like damask curtains against the afternoon sun. It was with that dull expression that Margie said in a cheerful voice that would have fooled anyone but Rachel, "How nice to see you," and held out her hand in greeting._

_"Margie, I—"_

_"Two people shake hands when they greet each other, it's called courtesy."_

Well, what did you expect?_ Rachel's face, carefully crafted a year ago to show no emotion, blinked rapidly as if irritated before smiling as she took her sister' hand. Margie's skin felt as rough and gritty as it appeared and when Rachel released her hand, some of the grit remained on her skin. Margie pulled her hand back, suddenly embarrassed._

_"Oh, I'm sorry. I was dusting the parlor when you knocked and some of the dust must've stayed on my hand. Here, I'll show you where to wash up."_

_"Margie, I know where—."_

_But her sister had turned and was walking towards their kitchen and Rachel was obliged to follow, closing the door behind her. Margie was washing her own hands in the sink when Rachel walked into the kitchen. She shook the excess water off her hands, droplets sparkling in the sunlight. Then she stepped back and looked expectantly at Rachel. Rachel stopped hesitantly in front of the sink, setting down her purse on the counter. She ran her hand quickly under the faucet and dried it. Instinctively, she raised her eyes to the windowsill to stare through the rose petals into the front yard. The view was exactly the same as it had been five years ago. She raised her hand slowly to touch one of the roses._

_Margie had picked up her purse from the countertop. "The parlor's this way." Startled, Rachel turned, her hand knocking several withered petals into the sink._

_"Since when have we had a parlor?" Rachel asked as they walked along the main hallway._

_"I've had one for about a year now. I changed the living room into one. Have a seat."_

_The sofas were covered in a glaring neon floral print that clashed terribly with the muted tones of the walls and hardwood floor. Rachel sat down in one of the sofas, feeling like she was descending into something poisonous, and watched as Margie did the same, her mouth fixed into a tightly controlled line._

_"So," Rachel said, desperate for conversation, "where's Mother?"_

_Margie's lips drew into an, if possible, even thinner line. "She's away," she said at last._

Okay, wrong thing to say. _Rachel nervously rubbed her hands over the arm of the sofa and said carelessly, "I remember these sofas. Michael sent them to you as a Christmas present. I always thought they were hideous."_

_Margie had set Rachel's purse down on the coffee table. "If you don't like them, you don't have to stay."_

Oh you're doing just *perfectly*._ "No, what I meant was…I tried to talk him out of it but…" A deep sigh. "Look, I don't expect that I'll know the right words to say right now, and I don't even know if there's anything I can do to make you forgive me, but, help me a little here. Please?"_

_Margie's voice was so terribly quiet. "It's always been about you, hasn't it, Rachel?"_

_Rachel's eyes went wide. "No! I—." Her voice stopped in mid-protest as the full weight of the statement hit her. She looked down at her feet to avoid her sister's gaze. The sigh that escaped her mouth then sounded like one of exhaustion as her eyes closed momentarily. "It has, hasn't it? I don't even know where to begin apologizing, sis, but…I'm sorry, I'm sorry for everything."_

_The distant chimes of the grandfather clock in the hallway intruded upon the silence that followed. Rachel's hands reached up to massage her temples as she laughed slightly. "I've really made a mess of things, haven't I?" Margie didn't speak. "I don't know anything anymore. I don't even know why I came home."_

_"Home…" Margie's wavering voice tested its existence before picking up speed as she snatched for more confidence. "Why else would you come home if not for comfort…why do you think I've stayed here all these years? Sometimes…I wish I had had the courage to leave like you did, just like that. But I also wish that you could have known what you were getting yourself into."_

_It was a hard speech for her, who had never talked much, but now it was even harder.  Her voice was oddly slurred with emotion and she had trouble composing her sentences. She rubbed the side of her head with a stiff hand, where she thought she might have a bruise. And then she smiled and the change to her face was incredible. Her papery skin flushed with a reddish tinge and for a moment she was recognizable as the girl who had run and laughed upon the green sward of their childhood._

_Margie's smile saddened as she observed her sister holding her head in agony. She sighed. "You won't tell me what's happening, will you?"_

_Rachel continued rubbing her temples. "I can't…" Her voice cracked. "Even if I knew, I couldn't. I'm too…confused. I'm not like you, Margie, I don't know people…"_

_Margie had opened the drawer of the coffee table and pulled out a worn and battered newspaper that she held against her chest. "I know that you doubt other people's intentions, but you doubt your own even more. I want to help you, Rach, but will you trust me to do so? Will you let me help you, no questions asked?"_

_Rachel looked with sadness into her sister's tired yet hopeful eyes. Here was a person willing to help despite every awful thing she had done or not done to her over the years. Margie deserved so much better than her…"I will."_

_Margie spread the newspaper flat upon the table, facing her sister, with the pages neatly folded to reveal the headlines._

**_Baltimore Psychiatrist Receives Highest Honor_**__

_Something flickered behind Rachel's eyes. _A shrink?**__**

_"His name is Dr. Hannibal Lecter. His practice, as you see, is based out of Baltimore. You live around there, right? Now I know that you haven't been…fond, of doctors ever since Dad died, but I have a good feeling about this one. I know people, remember?"_

_"What can you know from a picture?"_

_Margie touched Dr. Lecter's face on the newspaper, tracing his chin with her finger. "Look at the way he holds himself. Proper for the camera but only that, no silly grins or false cheer. This man is honest, perhaps a bit too honest sometimes. And look at his eyes, look at the depth in them…"_

_"Sis, you sound like you want to marry him."_

_Margie flushed red, making her skin tone look almost normal. She grabbed a scrap of paper and scribbled an address and phone number on it. "Well, better him than—." She blushed again, lowering her head. "Sorry. I shouldn't have said that," she muttered, shoving the piece of paper into her sister's hands._

_Rachel looked down at the token, her fingers already beginning to smudge the ink. She didn't know what to say. She appreciated the gesture but honestly…she could not see how a shrink, even a famous shrink could help her. She had always been leery of people who tried to read her intentions. She constantly feared that Michael would soon discover everything she was doing behind his back. And Margie…well, honestly, she frightened her sometimes with her intuition. She had been right about Michael. Would it be too much to ask to see if she was right about Lecter?_

_As was usually the case with her, Rachel spoke not her true feelings, but something else that would hopefully get her intentions across without embarrassing her. "'Highest honor', graduate from Harvard Medical, damn, this guy is going to be expensive."_

_Margie waved a hand carelessly through the air. "No questions, remember?"_

_Rachel opened her mouth to say something and then wisely clammed up. They remained in the parlor for nearly an hour more, discussing the most inane topics they could come up with: Marlboro ads, Jimmy Carter, Ophelia's virginity. It was the most peaceful period of Rachel's life in nearly ten years…except for the constant nagging doubt in her mind. Margie was right; Rachel disliked all doctors by nature although she tried desperately to keep these feelings from showing. _Stop being a bitch_, she told herself, _and just enjoy this time_._

_But when it came time to leave, Rachel could not keep herself from asking one final question. She had already turned to go down the porch steps when she couldn't take it anymore. "Sis, how in the world are you going to pay for this?" Margie took a deep, shuddering breath and Rachel immediately regretted giving into her doubt but it was too late to take it back now. "I mean, it's not like I don't appreciate this, but, I mean…" She trailed off as sadness deeper than eternity crept into Margie's eyes. Rachel could not have been more unprepared for the answer._

_"Mom's dead, Rachel. She's been dead for two years. Her life insurance will be enough to cover you." Rachel took so long to process what her sister had just said that the sound of the door clicking shut in her face registered first in her mind_

_Several neighbors crept toward towards their windows, peeking through the blinds to gawp at the sight of a woman in her early twenties with her hair expertly coiffed, dressed in a business suit and adorned with golden trinkets shuddering and trembling on her doorstep. She pounded, screamed, and pleaded before the unyielding wooden door for what seemed to be an eternity. Her words, muted by the glass windows, were incomprehensible to their ears. But they saw as the door suddenly flew open almost of its own volition and they watched as the two women embraced each on that dusty porch, one sobbing, one clinging to her sister for dear life, her eyes closed in concealed and unspeakable pain._

_------------------_

Dr. Lecter folded the newspaper neatly before stowing it in the glove compartment of the Civic along with the case file, making a mental note to slip them into the nearest mailbox on his way to Washington. Ariadne had been a most fascinating patient. He thought on this matter and other things as he put the car in drive and pulled onto the highway towards Baltimore. As long as he was in the neighborhood, he wished to see an old acquaintance.


	12. Sailing Through the Mist

**Labyrinth of the Burning Heart**

-----------------

As always the usual disclaimers apply here, yadda yadda Tom is God yadda yadda. . . oh, and one note: To all Latin scholars out there, yes, the translation is valid although I do apologize from the bottom of my heart, for ransacking the language in a way that puts Attila the Hun to shame. ;-)   
  
  


**Chapter 11**

**Sailing Through the Mist**

Saturday, September 1, 2001

Hannibal Lecter entered Green Mount Cemetery through a small service gate in the back, opening the lock with a paper clip. He walked past the castle-like main gate calmly; the attendant didn't even turn his head. Green Mount was Baltimore's first "rural cemetery," built in 1839 on someone's private estate far away from the overcrowded church graveyards. One could hear the birds without interstate traffic in the background. A green sward covered with bouquets struggled its way up a small hill before giving way to manicured lawns divided by a small path and dotted with tombs varying in size and price. The resting places of the rich and famous, the honest and cruel, John Wilkes Booth mouldering several yards away from Johns Hopkins. There was a service taking place on the side of the cemetery; one could barely see the coffin for the ostentatious bouquet spilling over the sides and dwarfing the mourners, bright lurid colors jarring the muted gray of the neighboring tombstones. Dr. Lecter walked as far from them as possible.

In the top left hand corner of the cemetery, just down the hill from the chapel/crematorium, was a tomb in the shape of a pedestal. A massive stone angel was perched atop, its wings arching over its head and pointed heavenward as if to skewer God in the eyes. The word "greatness" could be seen carved into the left wing.

Dr. Lecter stopped about six feet away from the elegant structure, his hands sunk deep into his pockets. He looked at his reflection looming, wraithlike, in the black marble. The thin tune from a bugle could be heard from the funeral service down the hill.

One hundred yards away, from behind a rhododendron bush and beside a birch tree, a pair of binoculars peered through a gap in the thick foliage. The binoculars went down and Ariadne rested her chin on her knees as she rocked back and forth on the balls of her feet, looking very much like a toddler. He had injected collagen into his face, distorting his features, however…she raised the binoculars to her eyes again, he was not wearing contacts over his eyes, preferring instead to pull a fedora low over his forehead. The salt and pepper beard he wore really didn't fit his face at all. Ariadne thought this with a smile even as she continued rocking and something seized her insides and shook it like a rat-killing dog.

---------------

_The piece of paper that Margie had given her had wrinkled in her pocket and the ink smeared so badly that she called three wrong numbers before finally reaching Dr. Lecter's secretary. The woman sounded professional enough, politely confirming her appointment on Monday afternoon. If she noticed the nervous tremor in Rachel's voice, she chose not to comment. But she probably dealt with a lot of callers with way more problems than her._

_Dr. Hannibal Lecter's office was located in a small business park a few miles away from the Maryland-Misericordia Hospital. Rachel passed the hospital on her right as she drove toward the office. She found it interesting that the hospital chose to include "merciful" in its name. The business park was surrounded by trees and small gardens leading from the back doors of the brick buildings. There was a placard posted in the yard in front of each building, listing the five or six doctors, lawyers, dentists, etc. that shared the building. Dr. Lecter's office was located in the smallest structure deep inside the park, but he shared the building with no one._

_Rachel parked the car, noting the presence of another Jaguar several spaces away. She walked up the path and stopped before the door. She frowned. It was far too quiet._

_The waiting room was painted a soft white with strips of wood dividing the walls into sections. There were two or three patients sitting on couches poring over magazines. Every few minutes someone would moan or fumble with a bottle of pills. The place had the antiseptic smell of Michael's office._

_Rachel stood in the corner of the room, giving the waiting patients a wide berth. The door in the back opened and the odor of leather and ashes permeated the room. She looked up, slightly surprised at what she saw. The man that stepped from the doorway was not tall, but his posture made him seem so. Authority radiated from his form and Rachel shrank away slightly. The smile on his face did not move past his lips to his eyes._

_Dr. Lecter was just showing the previous patient out, smiling good-naturedly and confirming an upcoming appointment. He saw his next patient out of the corner of his eye and kept her there for the next minute, just enough to see her clearly from the waist up. The stuttering man standing before him thanked him again and again for his invaluable help, his eyes pulsating with an insane tic. Dr. Lecter listened patiently. The woman's grandiose posture was forced; she twisted her hands nervously without realization even as she stood straight and tall and examined herself in the mirror. She wiped a speck of dust from her eyelid, catching sight of her bracelets as she did so. The woman started, seemingly aware for the first time of her cumbersome jewelry. She began stripping off the bracelets and placing them carefully in her purse, all the while her eyes darting around, trembling slightly as they observed her surroundings._

_He greeted her warmly, pretending not to notice the way her hand shook in his grasp. "Mrs. Bermuda, it's a pleasure. Why don't you step inside my office a moment? There's no need to put your bag down; we won't be staying there long." His voice was soft and undemanding._

_Too weary and too nervous to ask questions, Rachel stepped inside Dr. Lecter's office. It was a modest-sized room seemingly constructed entirely of dark wood and leather. The room was crammed full of books, all of which had been read extensively; she could see the creases in the spines. She did not look anymore, for Dr. Lecter had walked in and closed the door behind him. There was a sudden hitch in Rachel's breathing and for a moment she felt as if she were suffocating. The feeling passed and her heart hammered away as Dr. Lecter walked to his desk, carrying a thin manila folder._

_"Your sister sent us your records, and there's not that much there. Would you join me in the garden out back? I'm sure I could look this over on the way there."_

Rachel followed Dr. Lecter with her eyes as he walked over to the door opening to the garden and moved aside to let her pass. As she walked by him, her eyes focused on the file that he turned over in his hands so that the cover was turned up. She couldn't quite turn her eyes away from those hands: they looked strong and elegant, long-fingered, like the hands of a piano player. But the fingers conjured a different image: they moved restlessly over the file, almost predatorily. They made her think of spiders. . . and suddenly she felt as though she were descending into dark water, into damp nets of sticky, silken threads, waiting to be reeled into hungry jaws._  
  
She swallowed once and forced her attention on the garden instead, lying just ahead past the backgate of the building. It was much more secluded than the others, and easily twice as big. Despite this observation, however, Rachel felt more trapped with every passing minute. But Dr. Lecter's smile was warm and friendly and she knew she had to give him at least half a chance to earn her confidence. _Not every man is like your husband...  
  
If Dr. Lecter noticed her discomfort, he did not reveal it. Instead, he opened the folder, his index finger tracing her name as he began reading from the file. Hearing her full name, not just her husband's surname, fall from the psychiatrist's lips sent a shiver down Rachel's spine, though whether it originated in fear or... something else, something perhaps akin to foreboding... would remain unclear to her for the rest of her days.__

_"Mrs. Rachel Ariadne Cahlin Bermuda. Native of West Virginia, currently living by Chesapeake Bay with your husband. No children." Rachel could detect nothing from his tone, and it bothered her all the more. Again, Dr. Lecter gave no indication of noticing her uneasiness, as his careful examination of the file did not change. His eyes move over the first page once more, blinking once, before he shut the file and set it down on a nearby bench. Then he opened the backgate and they walked into the garden. He shut the gate behind them and then turned to lean against it._

_"First, before we discuss anything else, you have quite a selection of names to choose from, and I would like to know which one you would prefer me to use when I address you."_

_She shrugged, her eyes nervously looking back towards the gate they had come through. "It…doesn't matter. I'll answer to any of them."_

_Dr. Lecter raised his eyebrows in a frown. "The first thing the guards at Auschwitz did with their captives was to take away their names. They were so much easier to control when they were reduced to a set of numbers." His expression did not change, although Rachel thought that his eyes might have smiled for the briefest moment._

_Rachel stared, flabbergasted, and saw that he was serious. "Um, Ariadne then, I guess that sounds the nicest." She noted that Dr. Lecter had said the German word "Auschwitz" with a particularly harsh tone but did not dwell on that matter for long._

_Dr. Lecter paused for a moment and Rachel was afraid that he knew. The feeling passed. "Very well then." Then he seemed to pull away and his eyes darkened several shades. "Ariadne, the bride of Dionysus…something tells me that you will be a most interesting patient."_

_Ariadne wasn't in the right mood to think up a suitable retort. And besides…he wasn't so bad. Yet. They walked in silence. Dr. Lecter's garden was beyond description, and she began to feel dizzy from the number of times she turned to look again at a flowerbed they had just passed. The garden was obviously well-tended, yet none of the arrangements were forced or misplaced. The blossoms were allowed to spill over onto the path and seemed only to be restrained by the flowers' will to allow observers passage through their maze of color and thorns. The sheer abundance of colors reflected in Ariadne's eyes like so many gemstones. Azure blue, flaming red, pearl white, poisonous yellow, and rust-tainted, rich maroon. She reached out to touch a bed of peach-colored carnations with their edges stained blood red._

_The doctor's question jarred the thick silence. "So tell me, Ariadne, why do you dislike psychiatrists?"_

_She shot him a look, and a shield seemed to go down over her eyes. She looked over her shoulder unwittingly once again, making sure that nobody was following them. "I don't know…I guess I don't like the concept of being reduced to a set of influences."_

_"Do you think perhaps some people take comfort in having their troubles quantified? For example, that man I saw before you; he has schizophrenia. His most recurring visions are those of a mother, a father, and a lover. He makes it rather simple to deduce his desires in life. But the problems of the majority of the population including you and me are difficult if not impossible to quantify."_

_Ariadne stopped walking and turned to face him. "So what do you do?"_

_"I don't. Life is too slippery for books, Ariadne. What I do is accept the complexity of my patients and let them agree on their own solution. I am a guide, not a magic pill. Will that work for you?"_

_Her eyes narrowed with suspicion. Her piercing gaze traversed over Dr. Lecter's face, found no deception to feed on and softened. "Yes, I suppose so."_

_"Good. I would not want you paying for something that you didn't enjoy, at least somewhat."_

_Did he know? Ariadne wondered, frustrated at this man's maddening calm and perception. "You're different from most psychiatrists."_

_"Have you known very many?"_

_"One. Very briefly."_

_"How so?"_

_"After my father died. The doctors assigned me a psychiatrist. The man wore the thickest pair of glasses I had ever seen; he looked like he was drowning all the time. I only lasted half a session with him." Anticipating Dr. Lecter's next question, Ariadne paused only a moment before continuing, "During our first meeting, he leaned right up against me, shoving a stethoscope down my shirt and mumbling something about how the eyes were the windows to the soul; I thought he was going to eat me or something. They carried me out kicking and screaming. The doctor suffered a bruised rib and had to replace his stethoscope. At least that's what my mother said I did." A flash of pain at the mention of her mother flickered across her eyes briefly before her shield went down again._

They walked for a long time under the glaring eye of the sun, but Rachel revealed little, her defenses remaining firmly in place after her temporary slip. The mask would shiver on her face several times throughout the meeting, however. Dr. Lecter succeeded in drawing a few unconstrained smiles from her, even. Rachel wondered if she would have to pay for that with wrinkles the next morning._  
  
But she didn't worry nearly so much about that as she did about what she might have unconsciously revealed to Dr. Lecter with just that anecdote about her 'former shrink'. He seemed so perceptive, as though he looked straight through her skin. She really hadn't told him much, and yet his eyes still seemed to dissect her, layer by layer. She wished she could see into his head.   
  
As time ran out and the meeting came to an end, Rachel noticed to her surprise she was sorry to leave._ _Dr. Lecter turned to face her again, several blood-red roses in his hands. "Will I see you next week?"_

_"Yes. Do I have to lie on the couch?"_

_"I would prefer that you do so for our first few sessions. Then, if you're not comfortable with it, we'll see what we can do. Take one home with you, please." During his last sentence, he gestured toward the flowerbeds. "Take one, and tonight, think about what you'd like to discuss next week. Remember, it is your time." He noticed where she was looking and gestured to the roses in his hand. "They are for a lady I'm currently seeing, a Ms. Duberry." Rachel stared at the roses, and said nothing. Her thoughts lingered for a moment on Margie's rosebeds, and the times Michael had returned home holding a bouquet of flowers to his chest. He had always bought his at the flower shop down the street. Rachel wordlessly picked five of the peach and blood carnations and wrapped their stems in a piece of Kleenex from her purse._

Their next meeting took place the following week, as scheduled. Once again, Rachel arrived before Dr. Lecter had finished with his patient of the hour previous, and once again, Dr. Lecter's first view of her was of her placing the bracelets back in her purse. This time as they shook hands, Rachel's grip was firm. Her hands were still.

_Dr. Lecter held the door open for her and made a grandiose sweep with his arm. Rachel walked into the office for the second time, seeing it truly for the first time. She could make out several antiques in the display case on the wall now. There were quite a few carved specimens of petrified wood as well as replicas of famous paintings, that, by peering closely, Rachel suspected Dr. Lecter had painted himself. In front of the paintings were placed other antiques that were indistinguishable to her from this distance. Dr. Lecter was still standing by the door, and Ariadne came around the side of the couch and sat down on the edge. Dr. Lecter closed the door._

_"You have some impressive paintings, Doctor."_

_Dr. Lecter smiled as he walked over the carpet to sit in the chair across from the couch. "Thank you. There are more at my house. Perhaps you could see them sometime." Without elaborating, he opened her file and stared at the first sheet without really seeing anything. "Tell me things, Ariadne."_

_"Quid pro quo, Doctor."_

_Dr. Lecter raised his eyebrows. "What?"_

_"Something for something else."_

_"I was quite aware of the meaning." He looked at her and she met his gaze steadily. "Hmmm…so be it then. But I must ask you to speak first."_

_Nervousness drained out of her face to be replaced with relief and another emotion that she had not felt for five years, intellectual playfulness. Here was a worthy and willing adversary. "Go Doctor."_

_"What is your worst memory of childhood?"_

_She nearly laughed. So much for starting with the easy questions. "The death of my father." She did not wait for him to speak again but continued. "I don't remember it much, but it certainly affected the rest of my childhood a lot. My mother wasn't the most coherent form of company, and I fear I spent too much of my childhood pretending I was somewhere and someone else. I'm still trying to decide whether I regret that or not."_

_"You're very frank, Ariadne."_

_"Quid pro quo. Tell me about this Ms. Duberry…"_

-------------

She thought she had been ready to see him again. Her fingers dug into the damp soil under the birch tree and unearthed a small yellow flower. It was just a weed; she didn't know its name. She looked up; Dr. Lecter had not moved from where he stood. A hot wave of anger rushed through her and she nearly stood up. _How dare he? How could he stand there and feel nothing?_ She slumped back into her sitting position. No, she mustn't do this. She mustn't start regretting now. What she had done had given her freedom such as she had never felt before, yet it had not come without a price. She looked toward him again, not using the binoculars this time but looking at him and trying to match it with what she once knew. She wondered what he was thinking now. She wondered if he remembered as much as her, or regretted as much.

They had continued this arrangement for months, exchanging information, useless mainly. She told him about her childhood, leaving out names and places whenever possible. She had learned a lot about her namesake, Rachel DuBerry. Dr. Lecter told her about his tastes in art, music, and food. She knew quite a lot about those particular topics, and Dr. Lecter had been impressed, she thought, as they had debated the merits of Da Vinci versus Raphael. They both agreed that Emily Dickinson was overrated. Rachel did not like the way Dickinson simplified life and death into a scant amount of phrases broken by dashes. She suggested the gift that Dr. Lecter eventually bought for Ms. Duberry's birthday: a bottle of wine from the year of her birth. Michael had been puzzled by Rachel's newfound sullen attitude and prescribed various drugs produced by his pharmaceutical company.

Rachel thought she'd found a good friend. Hah. She crumbled on the earthy and leaf-strewn forest floor. Friends accepted your faults; they didn't tear them down and wave them in front of your face. Her body shook with something close to a sob. Dr. Lecter still had not moved.

-------------------

_"Don't you think that it's time we stopped this, Ariadne?"_

_A chill seized her insides. "Stopped what?"_

_Dr. Lecter sighed. "Please, Ariadne. I have never insulted your intelligence, please do not insult mine. For the past few months we have been talking in circles and while that is all very interesting, you could get the same experience from a well-trained parrot. I need you to tell me what is really bothering you."_

_"I thought I wasn't supposed to be reduced to influences and traumas. I thought you were supposed to—."_

_"I am supposed to help you, Ariadne, and I cannot do that if you insist on being pigheaded and stubborn. If you don't trust me enough to tell me what's wrong, I can understand that, but then you are on your own."_

_The face trembled, righted itself, tried its best to keep from crumbling. Something was happening in her eyes. An odd light danced in her pupils from the war once again taking place in her ravaged mind. Letting loose a sound equally comprised of moan, gasp, and growl, she cradled her head in her hands. She wondered whether she could hold her life together if she kept pretending that she didn't understand._

I'll shove you over and break you on the rocks, that's what I'd do…

_She raised her head to meet his gaze and saw in those maroon depths neither anger, ridicule, nor sympathy. Nothing but stillness and calm receptiveness. At that instant, he reminded her of the yawning mouth of a great cave. Rays of light barely penetrated the blackness before they were swallowed by the darkness. She could not know what he would do if she placed her life in his hands. She could not help but fear him then and balk at the uncertainty._

_And yet…he was also human. Even with her limited perception, she could sense a self-imposed limitation to his piercing gaze. He was holding himself back from exposing every single aspect of her life. And then, she knew that he knew what was bothering her, but he would force her to tell him for her own sake._

_But she could not know what he would do with her confession. Not unless she took the chance. Would he swallow it like a cave obliterating so many rays of light? Or would he present her image back for her observation, an imperfect image, like the looming reflection in the mirror of a black iron skillet? She would not know what to do with such a gift-curse if he presented such to her._

_Ariadne told him. She told him everything as best as she could: Ergo, her mother, Margie, the roses, desperation, greed, and Michael, Michael, Michael…She tried her best to explain what she did not understand. Love…God, what was love; it occupied a place so close to hate in her heart that the two emotions mingled into a sort of mindless insanity. She was talking so fast that her sentences began running together, desperate to be divulged as quickly as possible._

_Dr. Lecter stopped her then with a raised hand. She held her breath for what he would say, the anxiety weighing on her soul like a clammy fog. He said nothing she could have expected. "Ariadne, do you know what the opposite of love is?"_

_She was empty. The confession had taken so much out of her that the current function of her brain was little better than a child's. "I…" Something twisted inside her and she looked down at her empty hands._

_Dr. Lecter spoke very slowly and calmly. "The opposite of love is not hate. The two are actually more closely related than you may think. Your feelings for the person are of the same intensity; he holds the same power over you. The opposite of love is indifference. So, know this, Ariadne. Both of you are responsible for this parasitic relationship that currently exists. But I can help you escape it, or if you prefer, I can even help you dominate it."_

_There appeared a dark luster in Ariadne's golden eyes. Anxiety rushed out of her body to be replaced with relief and…some other emotion, she could not yet define, but she relished its murky, rich taste and felt she could hardly breathe. She swallowed and slowly nodded._

_That night, Dr. Lecter sat before his fireplace and watched Rachel Cahlin's file burn. The flickering flames were reflected as dancing stars in his darkened eyes. The papers curled in the flames and turned black. The next day, they resembled a snake's sloughed skin deposited among the ashes._

------------------

Ariadne resumed digging her fingers into the earth. They had had their lighter times of course, but they had never been without sadness lurking just underneath. The gods must have had a sense of humor quite similar to Hannibal's own. No victory without death. No warrior without a weak heel. No hope without all the evils of the world. She questioned herself then, one time of countless instances where she ripped away her facades and carefully constructed masks and wondered if her life was worth what it was now. Ariadne smiled grimly as she drew her tongue over dry and wind-parched lips. She and Starling were more alike than the woman would ever admit. The only true difference was that Starling refused to face her fears and desires…even if doing so resulted in her death.

Standing beside the tomb, Dr. Lecter reached inside his trench coat and removed a package that crinkled when he touched it.

--------------

_"You are originally from West Virginia, yet you have no trace of an accent. How did you manage that?"_

_"It's hard to become familiar enough with any one language to develop its accent when you're speaking so many."_

_"Is that so? Do enlighten me."_

_A small grin appeared on her lips. "With anything?"_

_"Yes."_

_With another wicked grin, Ariadne cleared her throat and began to sing. "Oh…Volo essem weiner Oscaris Meiris. Ille est qui esse amarem. Quod si weiner Oscaris Meiris essem, omnes sint in amore mecum."_

_Dr. Lecter's face twisted into the most awful grimace and Ariadne disintegrated into helpless laughter. "Ariadne," he said when he had regained his power of speech, "that is nothing short of sacrilege."_

_Tears were streaming from her eyes as she laughed, hopelessly attempting to stop herself. "What is? Do enlighten me."_

_Dr. Lecter felt as if every word was being ripped from his lips. "Singing that heinous…Oscar Meyer wiener jingle in Latin…the language of scholars and—."_

_"Really, doctor, I'm surprised you even know the tune," she teased and grinned, "You should see the look on your face."_

_A wry smile. "I'm sure it's a sight to be seen."_

_A wistful expression, so brief it could have been imagined, flickered across Ariadne's visage before she dissolved in laughter again. She mentally berated herself for her loss of composure. After all, it was just a song. But the sheer authenticity of her joy would not let her restrain this emotion no matter how much she tried and she tried but could not quite feel regret for it._

_Dr. Lecter watched her laugh, the first time she had ever done so in his presence, and, although he could not know, the first time in over seven years. Something buried in a dark, twisted hall of his memory palace fought its way into his eyes. The whirlpools of maroon agitated and shattered several masks that he had made for himself. For one moment, Hannibal Lecter sat defenseless, a ghost from the past branded upon his features. He was grateful that Ariadne did not see._

---------------

The roses that Dr. Lecter held in his hand were the deep rich color of heart's blood. As she watched, the maroon of his eyes was sucked into the velvety petals, leaving him pale and empty. She nearly turned away; she did not wish to see him like this.

Forcing himself to walk towards the tomb, Dr. Lecter stepped forward and laid the flowers at the base of the black marble, just below the neat chiseled words:

**MICHAEL BERMUDA (1945-1980)**

**RACHEL BERMUDA (1955-1980)**

**THEIR HAPPINESS STOLEN BY CRUEL FATE**

**RESPECTED, LOVED, AND HONORED BY ALL WHO KNEW THEM**

There was something indescribable in his face, Ariadne could see it, and it frightened her like nothing ever had. He turned as quickly as he had moved, sinking his hands back into his pockets as he made his way down the hill and out of sight. A harsh gust of wind tore through the trees, thrashing the branches and tearing dead leaves as they leapt from the trampled ground. The wind drowned out the bugle still playing taps as well as the thin scream rising from the trees to be lost in the roaring air and scudding clouds.

----------------


End file.
